
Class _Jl5TO 
^ 



Book 



COPYRIGHT DETOSm 




GERAIAN H. H. EMORY, 

Major, 320th Infantry. 

Killed in Action, November 1st, 1918. 



A BLUE RIDGE MEMOIR 



By 

EDWARD C. LUKENS, 

Lieutenant 320th Infantry, 80th Division, 



and 



THE LAST DRIVE 

and 

DEATH OF MAJOR G. H. H. EMORY 

By 

E. McCLURE ROUZER, 

Lieutenant 320th Infantry, 

Adjutant, 3rd Battalion. 

SUN PRINT, BALTIMORE 



■"{• 



Copyright, 1922. 



FEB -8 23 

©CU6982r3 



DEDICATION 

To the inspiring memory of that fearless soldier and splendid man, 
who fell leading his battalion against the enemy at St. Jiivin, France, 
on November first, nineteen hundred and eighteen, German Horton 
Hunt Emory, Major, Three Hundred and Tzvcntietli Infantry, this 
book is affectionately dedicated. 

Edward C. Lukens. 



"A BLUE RIDGE MEMOIR" 



INTRODUCTION 

The following narrative does not purport to be in any 
sense a battalion, company, or even a platoon history. It 
was written at odd times during the February and March 
following the Armistice, with the double purpose of killing 
some of the time that hung heavy on our hands during that 
dull period of waiting, and of preserving for personal and 
family records the writer's war experiences. It omits many 
of the most noteworthy things done by men of "I" Com- 
pany and by other units simply because it is an eye-witness 
narrative — a mere expanded diary — and the writer did not 
happen to witness them. Its only excuse for publication is 
the fact that it does bring in partial accounts of some of the 
greatest events in which the 320th Infantry took part, and 
glimpses of the lives and deaths of some of our comrades 
whose lives and deaths are worthy of record. 

Edward C. Lukens. 



CONTENTS. 

CiiAriioR. Page. 

1 We Meet Our Allies 9 

II Trench Life 25 

III Ll FE I N THE BoiS 42 

IV The Big Drive 56 

V The Cunel Drive 77 

VI Relieved 99 

VII The Argonne Forest 108 

VIII La Guerre Finh- 129 

The Last Drive and Death of Major G- H. 

H. Emory 141 



A BLUE RIDGE MEMOIR 



CHAPTER I 
We Meet Our Allies 

THE long months of monotonous drilling drew slowly to 
a close, rumors grew more persistent until they culmi- 
nated in orders, and a rainy night in May found our regi- 
ment actually on the march to our "point of embarkation." 
Passing the busy powder mills of Hopewell in the early 
dawn, we were rapidly loaded on to river boats at the historic 
landing of City Point, for a preliminary voyage to "an 
Atlantic port," as the censors have it, or more specifically, 
Newport News. 

We remained in dock a full two days after embarking, dur- 
ing which time no one was allowed to leave the ship or to 
mention his location in a letter. On a fine Sunday afternoon 
we started off, almost without warning, and in spite of our 
impatience at the delay, it gave us quite a shock, a mixture 
of a thrill of excitement and a sinking sensation, to see 
America getting away from us. The sights of the harbor, a 
change indeed from the deadly barracks and sand of the 
past eight months, kept our thoughts busy, but there was 
not a man who did not look at that receding land at least 
once and wonder if he would see it again. 

Our life on the converted German liner was on the whole 
pleasant, in spite of crowded holds, a few moderately rough 
days and the possibility of submarines. We read, pretended 
to study military manuals, talked, smoked and rehearsed our 
respective duties in case of a submarine attack. The first 
drill resulted in great confusion, shouting of conflicting 
orders, and not a little levity, but a severe "lecture" by the 
ship's commander resulted in a more serious attitude toward 
the submarines thereafter. 



10 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

When we had cleared the Capes and were therefore open 
to the possihihty of submarine trouble, for the entire ocean 
was practically the "danger zone" at that time, a "watch" of 
soldiers was organized to supplement the navy watch. It 
fell to my lot to have charge of one of the four watches, and 
it was my duty to inspect about fifteen guards, posted in 
different places about the ship, looking constantly out over 
the water. On the occasion of my first climb to the foretop, 
I made a mental note that the Navy did not have such an 
easy time as we had assumed. The deck looked small and 
far away, and this was only the lower foretop, not the real 
"crow's nest," which was manned by sailors. 

The view from the foretop well repaid the climb. The 
entire convoy of about a dozen transports, their hulls camou- 
flaged with a kind of cubist painting that seemed to me to 
make them especially prominent, and on the fringes of the 
group several diminutive but speedy destroyers which were 
our body-guards. 

No submarines were ever sighted, but as the watchers 
were required to report every object seen, no matter how 
innocuous, their monotony was broken by occasional ships, 
refuse from the ships ahead of us, and by whales and por- 
poises. One man would have reported a "sub," had he not 
been too excited to do so, when a whale popped up suddenly 
about one hundred yards from him. "My Gawd," he ex- 
claimed afterwards, "I never seen such a big fish !" As he 
had never seen the ocean before, his statement was doubtless 
true. 

No one seemed to worry much about submarines. This 
was not due to pure coolness, but rather to lack of imagina- 
tion. So long as none appeared, it was hard to imagine a 
sudden change in the situation, and after the first day or 
two we practically took it for granted that fortune would 
favor us, though we never relaxed our vigilance. 

One fine afternoon we sighted the lighthouse at Royan, at 
the mouth of the Gironde River. Our convoy of destroyers 
had already been increased, and now it was supplemented by 
a perfect mob of small harbor patrol craft, even converted 
launches, which tooted their shrill whistles in welcome. 



IVe Meet Our Allies 11 

Overhead a French dirigible and several planes sailed 
around, looking down into the water for possible "subs." 

We anchored inside the nets, and knew the submarine 
peril was at an end. We had to await the turn of the tide 
before going on up tlie river, which we did the next morning. 
I shall never forget that first glimpse of France. The coun- 
try was green and pretty, and the people along the banks 
waved their hands and cheered as we steamed slowly past. 

About twilight we reached the dock, at the new American 
port a few miles below Bordeaux, a piece of America itself 
planted in France. There were big Baldwin locomotives, 
American flags flying, American soldiers, white and black, 
and civilian employees, mountains of supplies, and work 
moving busily on all sides. Mingled in the scene were 
French soldiers, French civilians, and a swarm of nonde- 
script orientals known as "Annamites." 

We debarked on Sunday evening, June 9th, and marched 
five miles to Camp Genicart, one of the receiving camps 
of the port. This was our first march on French soil, and 
our first glimpse of French people. Many of the boys had 
spent an hour or two over a dictionary while on the boat, and 
now was their chance to try out their newly-acquired knowl- 
edge. The result must have proved our insanity to the 
natives, for there was a chorus of "Oui, Oui's" wherever we 
passed a group of people, with hardly another French word 
distinguishable. 

We also sang, and it seemed strange indeed to be marching 
along a road in France to the tune of "Hail, Hail, the 
Gang's All Here," although that well known ballad has been 
heard in hundreds of French hamlets by this time. It is 
even reported that in one village the people thought it was 
our national hymn and respectfully took off their hats while 
the troops passed, while a detachment of French soldiers 
stood at "present arms." 

Our duties during our brief stay at Camp Genicart were 
not severe, and the officers and "non-coms" were allowed to 
go into Bordeaux with considerable freedom. From the 
village of Lormont, a little trolley car runs to the city, 
manned by two half grown boys. We did not have a sou 



12 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

of French money, but soon found that the people had no 
objection to American money provided they were allowed 
about fifty percent extra on the rate of exchange. The car 
stopped at the end of the magnificent bridge across the 
Gironde, and there we got a good view of the city with its 
cathedral spire and the shipping of all the allied nations 
anchored in the river. American M.P.'s directed traffic 
across the bridge. 

The city was gay and the streets crowded in spite of the 
war. In the course of a few blocks one would see more 
different kinds of uniforms, more decorations and medals 
and more peculiar-looking people than would be imagined to 
exist. The cafes with their chairs and tables on the side- 
walks were a great novelty to us, as that custom prevails in 
America only in the case of small town cigar stores. The 
public square was filled with rows upon rows of enormous 
wine barrels, leaving scarcely room to walk through between 
them. Bordeaux was far removed from the zone of air 
danger, and the streets were brilliantly lighted. An es- 
pecially bright corner attracted vis into a theatre, where we 
found to our surprise that a medley of grand opera scenes 
was being played. Between acts the lights went on, and 
several distinguished looking Frenchmen in much-decorated 
uniforms and enormous whiskers got up, pulled out large 
field glasses, and calmly surveyed the audience. Their 
frankness was admirable. Never again, we decided, would 
we consider it necessary to glance furtively around us when 
we wanted to see someone in the audience. There was also 
in Bordeaux that evening another play, the title of which 
was "Oh, La, La," and this exclamation thenceforth was 
added to our vocabulary. 

It was in Bordeaux that we made our first attempts at 
talking French. Few indeed were very successful at first, 
although we soon learned enough of the common words to 
get along in the stores and restaurants. Those who remem- 
bered a smattering of it from school courses had a little 
start, but the others quickly caught up and began speaking 
for themselves. It was a favorite amusement at first to 
engage a native in a conversation, and it gave one a great 



We Meet Our Allies 13 

feeling of superiority to be able to make him understand a 
few words if someone else could not. These early dialogues 
were not highly intellectual. They ran something like this : 

American : "Bon jour, monsieur," 

Frenchman : "Bon jour, monsieur." 

American : "Beaucoup soldats ici." 

Frenchman :"Oui, Oui," followed by several paragraphs in 
which the word "Boche" is distinguishable. 

American : "Oui, Oui, Boche pas bon." 

Frenchman : "Oui, Oui, Oui," followed by several more 
paragraphs at an accelerated rate, in which nothing is dis- 
tinguishable. 

American : "Oui, Oui ; bon soir, monsieur. Say aren't we 
getting away with it fine ?" 

Gradually there has grown up a sort of "army French" 
that a great many of the men use with fair success. It con- 
sists of a fair sprinkling of common words and expressions, 
mixed with a few English words the French have picked up, 
used with no attempt at gender or tense changes, and sup- 
plemented by reversion to Indian sign language. For instance, 
in a store: Soldier: "Any tabac?" Native: "Pas tabac; fini 
yesterday." Soldier: "Chocolat?" Native: "Qiocolat fini." 
Soldier: "Well then, beaucoup comme ca," pointing at a 
box of crackers, "Combien?" Native, handing them out: 
"Deux francs." Like "check" in a chess game, either party 
is privileged at any time to say, "No compree," which, being 
neither English, French nor Italian, is understood by all 
three races to mean that the preceding remark has not gotten 
across. 

Some French words have taken firm root as American 
slang, and will doubtless be heard at home for years to come, 
"Fini" for anything that is worn out, used up, or discarded 
is now "good American." "Bon" and "pas bon" are as com- 
mon, and one often hears a soldier say that the weather or 
the food is "no damn bon." "Allez" with the French means 
not merely "go" but also "get up," and you can see a Yank 
mule skinner as well as a French artillery driver crack his 
whip and "Allez" his team. "Beaucoup," "tout suite," "tres 
bien" and "parti" are equally common. 



14 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

Of the French soldiers, we saw little. Even after wc had 
been in the line, and had seen hundreds of them, we never 
really became acquainted with them. The language barrier 
is a great one when it comes to real acquaintance, and we 
seldom met a Frenchman who could speak any English. Our 
men at first looked on them more or less as curiosities — 
part of the foreign scenery. As the novelty wore off, it 
changed to an attitude of more or less tolerant amusement. 
We never actually fought side by side with them, although 
we would occasionally see their artillery in action, and our 
admiration for them was founded more on what we knew 
they had done than on what we saw in them, while those of 
our men who did not know what they had done, did not ad- 
mire them at all. In our everyday life of passing them on 
the roads and in the villages, we admired their whiskers, 
laughed at their strange costumes, perhaps exchanged a 
limited greeting, or gave them a few cigarettes, and that was 
about all. We did not pretend to understand them and they 
were hardly a factor in our lives. It might have been 
different if we had been able to know a few of them by in- 
dividual name and reputation. A Frenchman would point 
to a scar and say, "Blesse ; Verdun ;'' we would be interested 
in about the same way as though he had shown us a shell 
casing from Verdun. If we had been able to hear the whole 
story of his experiences there when he got wounded, it 
would have been a different matter. 

After a week's stay at Camp Genicart, we entrained for 
Calais, where we were fitted out with British equipment in 
preparation for our period of training with them. A journey 
on a French troop train is a fearful and wonderful thing. 
The men are usually loaded into box cars with straw on the 
floors, "40 Hommes, 8 Chevaux," being the alternative ca- 
pacity. Most of our men were more fortunate on this first 
trip and got third-class compartments, which at best were 
crowded, hard and very cold at night. The officers had first 
or second-class compartments, and were fairly comfortable. 
We would stop at frequent intervals, for no apparent reason, 
and excited railroad officials would run up and down the 
train shouting and arguing. 



We Meet our Allies 15 

The country through which we traveled was green and 
beautiful in early June, and in spite of discomforts the trip 
was an interesting one to men who were in a foreign land 
for the first time. 

The French Red Cross supplied hot coffee, of course 
without sugar, at occasional stops. Except for this, the 
rations consisted mostly of "canned Willie" and hardtack. 
The people who lived near the railroad must have known of 
our crackers from previous troop trains, for in almost every 
town that we passed through there would be lines of children 
along the railroad bank, crying out "Biscwee," biscwee," as 
plaintively as young robins squawking for worms. The men 
would throw them out of the windows and the children 
would pounce on them and eat them as though they had 
been the finest of candy. It gave us more of an appreciation 
of the shortage of food in the country than all the statistics 
we ever read. 

It was in Calais that we made our first acquaintance with 
the British soldier and the process of becoming really ac- 
quainted was far more complex than the ordinary war cor- 
respondents allowed the public to believe. With them it is 
a mere "Howdy, Tommy," "Howdy, Yank," performance, 
and the job is done. Now in real life, friendships between 
men of different characteristics are not so easily completed. 
There was not a little misunderstanding, there was some 
amusement, doubtless on both sides of the fence, and there 
was a gradual and slow education of our men to an appre- 
ciation of what the British had been through, and of the 
British to a realization of what the Americans had in them, 
before the American and the British soldier could form a 
real friendship. At the time we were in the British sector, 
the Americans had yet to fight the battle of Chateau Thierry, 
l^t alone the final Meuse-Argonne drive. The British had 
been impatient and worried by what had seemed to them an 
undue period of waiting for our help ; when we did come, we 
were worst in some points such as march discipline and 
military courtesy, in which they were best. 

On the other hand, we did not know what it was to have 
endured four years of war without seeing daylight ahead, in 



16 ./ lUuc h'idt/c Memoir 

other words, did not know what it was to Ijc "fed up," and 
it seemed to us at first as if the British were unduly inclined 
to "let the (lernians alone if they let us alone," and accept 
trencii life as a normal type of existence without a thought 
of ever ending the war. They thought we lacked discipline; 
we thought they lacked "pep." Douhtless in part hoth were 
true, hut in neither case was the fault as fatal or as inex- 
cusahle as it seemed to the opposite temperament. Our 
faults of discipline were more due to unformed hahits and 
informality than to any real failure of respect or obedience; 
and their apparent lack of "pop" was amply explained by 
their severe jolt of the previous spring, and am])ly atoned 
for by their renewed exhibition of driving power the follow- 
ing fall. The British army's past was unknown to many of 
our men, who therefore did not apjM-eciate that we never 
even saw the best of it, which was destroyed before we got 
there ; the American army's future was as yet unrevealed, 
and not even guessed at by the British. They had fought 
so long they could hardly imagine the end of the war; we 
didn't yet know what fighting was. and couldn't imagine it 
lasting so very long. I told an English lieutenant in July 
that I expected the war to be over by Christmas ; he politely 
informed me that I would get over that after 1 had been 
disappointed one or two Christmases like he had. In short, 
we thought they were the worst pessimists we had ever seen, 
and. no doubt, they thought we were just too green to under- 
stand the Huns' strength, which in a way may have been 
true, without being any disadvantage. 

Then, too, in more trivial matters of speech, dress, and 
social customs, they were just enough ditTerent from us to 
cause friction, while the much greater things in which we 
were alike were taken for granted and passed by unnoticed. 
Our men realized that the French soldiers would talk 
b^rench. but could not see why an Knglishman. unless he 
intended to be affected, should talk English instead of 
"American." People in America who alTect an English 
accent are generally fools, because any affectation is foolish ; 
therefore it took a little time before our men could sec that 
an Englishman's accent was not a discredit to his character. 



We Meet our Allies 17 

Similarly, their daily "tea" was at first put down as a 
mark of etlfcminacy, simply because "afternoon tea" at home 
suggests a rather insipid kind of a "party" in which the fair 
sex predominates. When, however, we found that "tea" 
included something to eat, a smoke, and not infrequently 
more "Scotch" than tea, it was generally agreed that "four 
meals a day" was a great idea, and they were forgiven. 

When a British officer in those days asked me how our 
men like the Tommies, I could hardly answer truthfully 
without disappointing him, nor do I think that many of them 
fully understood the reasons for the difficulty. Now, after 
we have known them for several months, been in the 
trenches with them and learned from our own experience 
what it must have been to have fought over four years, I 
can truly say that our men have learned to give them their 
just praise, and have largely forgotten their former preju- 
dices, but we did not fall into each others' arms at first 
sight. 

Our relations with the English officers afforded us much 
amusement, though the contact was personal and individual 
enough to enable us to like some and dislike others without 
blaming the few less agreeable ones on the race. I think 
some of them were rather shocked by our lack of dignity at 
the mess, and especially by our familiarity with the private 
who waited on the table. ITe was an obliging fellow and a 
good cook, so we tolerated his peculiarities while the British 
officers who ate with us doubtless thought we encouraged 
them. When any ol" the officers cracked a joke, there would 
be a loud guffaw from the waiter and an argument would 
not be complete until he had added his opinion to the rest. 
In contrast to the demeanor of the British "officers' servants" 
— they could never understand why we didn't use the word 
—it must have been startling. I have had many a laugh 
since then at one of my encounters with an English officer, 
who, I believe now, had not the slightest intention of being 
rude. I met him in a support trench on the occasion of my 
first visit to the front with a group of non-coms, and, think- 
ing of the possible convenience of knowing his name, I 



18 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

started to introduce myself in the ordinary American way. 
"My name's Lukens," I began. "Indeed!" 

I didn't have the remotest idea what to say next ; I was 
never more flabbergasted in my hfe. 1 suppose in England 
they don't introduce themselves just that way, and he didn't 
know why I should suddenly announce my name. At any 
rate, I never got particularly well acquainted with this officer, 
nor did he and I constitute a howling success in the "alliance 
between the two great English speaking races" line. 

I cite these little instances just to show the real situation 
at that time, as a contrast to the ordinary oratory on the 
subject, and to show how badly we needed to get better ac- 
quainted, and what ridiculously small differences had been 
keeping us apart, in spite of our similarity in a thousand 
more important ways. After we had been in France for 
six months, and some of us got to London on a week's leave, 
we realized how nearly like home it seemed, and how unlike 
home hVance had been, and the simple pleasure of seeing 
people on the street who didn't look or talk foreign wiped 
out all petty prejudices that still remained. American friend- 
ship for France is idealistic and national ; for England it is 
commonplace and personal, and no more poetic than the 
friendship between Pennsylvanians and Californians might 
be. 

The latter is the more difficult kind to effect, but to me, 
at least, it means a great deal more. The French are so 
different that we hardly know whether they have individual 
peculiarities or not, so we judge them by Joan of Arc, La- 
fayette and the defense of Verdun. The British are so 
nearly like us that we take it for granted, and think they 
should be exactly like us, and judge them as we judge the 
family next door, or as a Princetonian judges a Harvard 
man. 

While at the Calais camp, we got our gas masks, traded in 
our American Eddy-^tone rifles for the British short Enfleld, 
and were instructed in the mechanism of the latter by some 
British sergeants. I recall one of them who made a signifi- 
cant as well as an amusing remark. He warned us about 
the cost to the Australians and Canadians, of their early 



We Meet our Allies 19 

lax discipline, evidently fearing that we would suffer from 
the same trait, but added that the English had learned some 
things from the "Colonials." He said, "You know we used 
to pray "God bless the squire and all his relations," Now 
we say, "The Squire! Huh! 'oo the 'ell's 'e?" So it looks as 
though after the war "the Squire," like everybody else, 
would be judged by what he did in the war, and not by what 
his ancestors did, and the Sergeant gave the "Colonials" the 
credit for the Englishman's change of attitude. 

It was at Calais that part of our regiment experienced 
their first air raid. They were of frequent occurrence there, 
and seldom caused any casualties. Nevertheless, the Tom- 
mies stationed there had a wholesome respect for them, 
which our men had not yet learned, and they were an as- 
tonished bunch when they heard the Yanks call out "Mark 
five," "Remark seven," "Bull on number three," as though 
on a rifle range, when the "eggs" went off. However, when 
one finally landed a little closer than the rest, they proved 
that it was due to ignorance rather than excessive bravery 
by all falling over backwards in a heap. 

Air raids were frequent during our stay in the "back 
areas," but were not as bad as often described. At least, 
this was true in our case; other outfits whose luck was differ- 
ent might estimate them dift'erently. While we were at 
Hesdin L'Abbe, a little village near Boulogne, they came 
over several times. It is a weird experience at first to hear 
the motors whirring overhead and try to figure which sounds 
are "Jerry" and which are British ; then to near the low 
boom of the "Antis" and the rattle of machine guns, punctu- 
ated by the heavy boom of the "eggs" themselves. A person 
is a little nervous, wondering how close they are going to 
drop, but the space we occupied was such a small proportion 
of the space available that we could hardly imagine our luck 
being bad enough to get them. After the first two or three 
fairly distant raids, most of the men would merely wake up, 
curse a little, and go back to sleep. Some of the state- 
ments written in home magazines about air raids have been 
worse than exaggerations — they have been lies. I read once 
that the Huns had made the nights so hideous that a soldier 



20 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

feels safer in the front line trenches than in a village within 
fifty miles of the line. The writer should have visited the 
front line sonic time, and seen whether he felt safer there 
than in the rest areas. I do not recall any case of an air 
bomb casualty in our battalion. 

There was just one time when our company was thrown 
into a state of excitement by an airplane; and this incident 
will live forever in our annals as a joke on the entire outfit. 
We were lined up for retreat in an orchard dm^ing the early 
days of the summer, when several planes flew directly over 
us. They turned out to be British, but it is never easy to be 
certain at first glance. Suddenly one of them put off some 
kind of a smoke signal, the effect of which was a trailing 
ball of smoke falling directly on the company. Someone 
looked up and let out a yell, and the entire company cleared 
the orchard in two jumps. One little Italian got on his gas 
mask and tin hat and reached the fence as soon as the rest. 
He said he was taking no chances. The anti-climax of the 
tragedy, there being no explosion, started recriminations as 
to who had begun the scare. One officer was accused of 
giving the command : 'T Company, let's go !" and for weeks 
afterward the men of the other companies would yell that at 
us as we passed. Be it said in conclusion, however, that 
this motto which started as a jeer, became our battle cry, 
and many a time later, when to "go" meant to go forward 
in the face of enemy fire, I have heard the men sing out 'T 
Company, let's go" as w^e started onward. 

J-Iesdin L'Abbe was the first of the many little villages in 
which we stayed for a short time. We never stayed long in 
any one place, and long ago lost count of the number of 
moves. We pitched our shelter tents in different orchards, 
so they would be less liable to possible daylight air raiders 
than if in an open field. The officers' mess was established 
in a little estaminet, where our own cook prepared the army 
rations on the iMX'nch lady's stove, and supplemented them 
by what he could buy from her garden. The one large 
building of the town was an old chateau — no French town 
is complete without one — and in this some of the officers got 
rooms, while the rest of us slept in tents in the backyard. 



We Meet our Allies 21 

Altogether it was an ideal rural existence, and we were 
rather sorry when the order came to leave. 

We advanced toward the front in several stages, or as one 
of the men put it, "each place was a little worse than the 
last." The moving itself was no small part of our burden, 
for it almost invariably involved some early rising and some 
night hiking. On this particular move, we got up at some 
unearthly hour, started before daylight and marched seven 
kilometers to the railroad station, only to wait there until 
the middle of the afternoon before the train was ready. 

We had been given an exaggerated idea of the promptness 
with which we would be put into the line, and everyone 
thought when we left Hesdin L'Abbe that we were headed 
straight for the front. So, although we were actually 
dumped out a good twenty-five miles behind the line, we 
had all the mental experiences attendant upon going up to 
the line, and these were practically repeated at every move 
we made, both prior to our trench experiences and prior to 
our later "big drive." So, although each move got us nearer 
the reality, the "sensations" each time were less novel, and 
it was that gradual process of becoming accustomed to the 
idea that prevented us from being more nervous when the 
time came. As someone said a few days before our first 
attack, we had been "Just Before the Battle Mother" for so 
long that he couldn't stay excited to save his life. 

The evening that we arrived at Ivergny was the first time 
that we could see the flashes of the guns at the front, and 
could hear their rumble with any distinctness, and it brought 
the reality closer to our minds than many months of training. 
We thought we were nearer than we really were, until we 
saw the maps, for the flashes can be seen at a great distance 
on clear, dark nights. Our march was not a long one, but the 
way was confusing, we did not know what we were getting 
into, and we all had a sneaking suspicion that we were "for 
it" at once, so all in all it was a tiring march. The British 
"billet warden" met us at the village about midnight, the 
companies were hastily divided up into groups and assigned 
to difl^erent barns, the officers hunted around for their rooms. 



22 A Blue Rid(/c Memoir 

and we turned in, hardly caring what happened in the future, 
so long as got to sleep at last for that night. 

We stayed at Ivergny for two weeks and got some solid 
training during that period. Never had "drill" had such a 
meaning, for every man knew we were to begin the real busi- 
ness soon, and all branches of training were energetically 
pushed. I have often wondered since how much of it was 
wasted, and whether any of that waste was preventable. The 
British taught us that the bayonet was our greatest weapon, 
and it was to bayonet training that we devoted our greatest 
efforts ; and so far as I know, hardly a man in the regiment 
has had a chance to use it. No one could tell at that time 
that in our final fighting we would seldom come into such 
close contact, and that our main obstacles would be shelling 
and machine gun fire. We did not know whether we would 
fight in trenches or in the open, in attack or in defense. At 
least, the bayonet work was splendid exercise and mentally 
awakening. 

The gas training is another thing that we laugh at as we 
look back to it. The main trouble was that it was overdone ; 
we were taught to be afraid to death of it, and we were all 
made more nervous than was necessary. Gas as used in 
1915 before gas masks were carried must have been a 
fiendish horror ; even in our times it caused many casualties 
by putting men out of action for a few days or weeks, but 
with us, at least, it was not the horror that it was advertised 
to be. I don't know of a single death from gas in our bat- 
talion, though I know of some rather nasty lung and eye 
troubles left in its wake, and I know of very few instances 
where a few seconds slowness in adjusting the mask made 
any difference. The trouble would be that the smell would 
be slight, the man's mind would be on something more 
urgent, and he would not use his mask at all. In our train- 
ing we were taught that six seconds was the time limit, and 
one whiff would "knock you cold." We were also taught 
that we might have to work or fight for hours on end in gas 
masks, whereas, in fact, we seldom had to keep them on for 
more than a few minutes. During the period of training at 
Ivergny, we were required to keep our masks on for stated 



We Meet our Allies 23 

periods, starting at a half hour and increasing to an hour 
and a half. I know of no worse bore in my whole life than 
this wearing of a gas mask for a long time with no gas 
present, and I used to laugh to think of the spectacle we 
made to the French civilians as we marched, rested, talked, 
or even slept in gas masks just because it was between 10.30 
and 12 on a drill morning. 

Another branch of training was vitally necessary to know, 
but almost unnecessary to teach, because under actual condi- 
tions we found it was almost instinctive ; this was techni- 
cally described as "Use of Cover" and consisted of dropping 
quickly, crawling so as not to be seen, and making the best 
possible use of the least irregularity in the ground that 
would stop a bullet or shell fragment, or keep an enemy from 
seeing you. Time after time we shouted ourselves hoarse 
to make the men get flat when we were practising, and the 
first time the machine gun bullets were actually humming 
over us, I don't believe the fattest man was over six inches 
high. Many a man in training was so clumsy that in drop- 
ping down he had to get his knees on the ground first, like a 
cow, before he could lie down, but when the first shell came, 
he "hit the dirt" like Ty Cobb. There is nothing like a 
touch of the "real stuff" to teach tricks that bear directly on 
one's chances of coming home ! 

From Ivergny we marched to the town of Saulty, another 
step nearer the front, and this time we were at the "jumping 
ofl:' place" for our first real adventures. Saulty was a good 
sized village, almost entirely dominated by the British, for 
many of the inhabitants had moved out on account of the 
air raids, though some remained to make money by trade 
with the soldiers, as the Americans were especially easy to 
sell things to at stifif prices. As the men used to say: "The 
French own the country : the British run it : and the Ameri- 
cans pay for it." 

Air raids were so frequent at Saulty that we were required 
to build parapets around all the barracks, which were roofed 
with corrugated iron, but fortunately the most severe raid 
occurred when we were up in the line, which showed that 
there are compensations in everything. 



24 A Blue Rldyc Memoir 

We had been at Sanity bnt a few days when the order 
came out to send the ofticers and non-coms up to the sector 
of the line held by the famous Guards Division of the 
British, for observation and instruction, and this being our 
first experience, we were eager to go. We grew less eager 
with each succeeding trip, though no less determined as a 
matter of grim duty, but the first chance to see the real thing, 
after such a surfeit of rehearsing, was honestly welcomed. 
It was also a remarkably fortunate thing to be able to get 
over the first strangeness and inexperience without having 
the responsibility of commanding men at the same time. 



25 



CHAPTER II 
Trench Life 

OUR experiences on this first trip to the trencher had in 
them nothing unusual ; but they were new to us, and 
their impressions were deep and lasting. We were carried 
in "motor lorries," as the British call their trucks, to Biair- 
ville, a much battered village which marked the approxi- 
mate edge of the shelled zone. The enormous British naval 
guns barked all around the town, and as even friendly explo- 
sions were new to us, they made us jump considerably. We 
had a joke on some of the party who thought they were 
exploding shells, but we all soon learned to tell the dififer- 
ence. 

It was while waiting over a few hours at Blairville, that 
we first saw enemy shrapnel exploding ; in fact, it was the 
first hostile fire except air bombing that we had ever seen ; 
and, although it was fairly distant and utterly ineffective, it 
gave us the realization that we were now "in the game" and 
from now on a target for everything they had to offer. It is 
quite a spectacle, though not nearly as dangerous as the 
high explosive. The Germans for some reason burst their 
shrapnel at an enormous height, so that it rains down over 
a large area, but leaves plenty of places untouched. It also 
gives ample time to jump for cover after the burst is seen 
in the air, before the shower reaches earth. Why they so 
seldom burst it low, I don't know, but I am glad they did 
not. In fact, not counting the common use of the word to 
mean shell fragments, shrapnel proper was rather rare in 
our experience ; and I estimate that we saw perhaps 200 
H. E. shells burst on impact to one shrapnel shell "bursting 
in air." 

Some officers of the Royal Engineers entertained us in a 
luxurious dugout while we were waiting for darkness, and 
for the guides to lead us up to the infantry positions, for in 
the stationary trench life in vogue at that time, there were 
strict rules against appearing within range of enemy obser- 
vation during daylight hours. 



26 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

As our little party started out in single file over the shell- 
pocked field behind the lines, in darkness and almost in 
silence, it reminded me more of a fraternity initiation than 
anything else 1 had ever seen. The sense of something un- 
known ahead, combined with our utter dependence on a 
strange guide, were enough to make the resemblance seem 
real. Frequent Very lights in the distance showed us the 
front position, and showed us also that we were in a salient, 
for these signals were seen on our flanks as well as straight 
to the front. Our own shells went leisurely over our heads 
in large numbers, with an occasional "incoming" shell going 
a safe distance back of us by way of variation. The friendly 
ones were in the great majority, but enough of them were 
"agin us" to give us some valuable practice in learning to 
differentiate between the sounds. The difference is almost 
impossible to describe in words, but is easy to learn. A shell 
travelling through the air is often compared to an express 
train in its sound. Now our own shells, since we heard 
them early in their flight and high above our heads, would 
give out a sort of rhythmatic roar, decreasing in volume ; 
while incoming shells would increase in sound, and sound as 
if the express train were rapidly gaining in speed. The ap- 
parent speed of the express train, which is the best sound 
analogy, shows how close you are to where the shell is going 
to land. When you hear a roar that would be ten times too 
fast for any train in the world — then drop quick ! What I 
can't fully explain is why the shells that land nearest are 
often not heard coming until too late to duck at all. I sup- 
pose it is because the sound travels more slowly than the 
shell, which has perhaps landed while you are hearing it in 
mid-flight. At any rate, there is that much truth in the old 
saying that "you never hear the one that gets you." 

Our guide brought us to a railroad bank and from an ex- 
cavation therein there emerged a stout Briton who greeted 
us as though we had been calling at his regular house. The 
non-coms were taken in hand by the Scots' Guards N.C.O.'s, 
our company commander was given a bunk by the Captain, 
and a sergeant showed the other lieutenant and myself to a 
little extra dugout where we could sleep. On the way to it. 



Trench Life 27 

I amused the sergeant and startled my companion by sud- 
denly reaching for my gas mask when we passed three dead 
mules in the darkness ; the smell was certainly similar to 
what we had been taught to recognize as phosgene. The 
sergeant said the mules had been there so long that the 
spot was universally known as "Dead Mule Corner" and I 
could readily believe it. He also said that they hardly ever 
had any gas, and were not likely to get any, which we soon 
learned was not to be believed. 

We were awakened early in the morning by the clatter of 
Klaxon horns and watchman's rattles and by the voice of the 
Guards sergeant, who was decent enough to stick his head 
in our hole and yell at us before making for his own. We 
frantically adjusted our masks, listening to the dull fizzy 
detonations which we knew by previous description meant 
gas. We had a gas-proof blanket over the entrance, and I 
had closed this on general principles before we went to 
sleep, but we were taking no chances. Lieutenant Titus and 
I have had many a laugh at ourselves since, but at that time 
we still believed that one whiff might be fatal, and we had 
no proof that the curtain was actually air-tight. 

We sat for perhaps half an hour in a gasless dugout with 
our masks on before we decided to risk the fatal one whiff. 
Finally we got restless. "Aren't we fools," said I, "to be 
sitting here in our masks if that curtain is gas-proof." "Yes," 
he mumbled back, "but wouldn't we be worse fools if we 
took them off and found it wasn't airtight?" 

That seemed pretty good logic, so we waited awhile 
longer, but my mask was a little tight and I got impatient 
again. So I sniffed suspiciously, took it off, smelled around 
the edge of the blanket and decided all was well. Then I 
couldn't persuade Titus to take his off' even then, and the 
sight of him sitting there with his still on finally made me 
lose faith and put mine on again, while he delicately added 
to my nervousness by reminding me that gas sometimes 
showed no effect on a man for several hours. Next, he got 
tired of waiting, took his mask off, and began persuading 
me to remove mine again, which this time, I was reluctant 
to do. Finally we both got them off, and, after another 



28 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

period of watchful waiting, decided to venture outside and 
see whether the atmosphere was yet clear. It was getting 
light now and we saw someone without a mask, so decided it 
must be all right ; but on taking them off again we found 
the mustard smell so strong that we started once more to 
debate about it, and on they went for the final time when a 
new figure appeared upon the scene with his still on. By 
this time we had become so disgusted with our own inde- 
cision and had begun to laugh at ourselves so much, that 
we soon put them away and ended the farce for good. 

Since then we have learned by experience how strong 
the lingering smell can be without being dangerous and have 
often taken chances in spite of the smell to avoid the incon- 
venience, and so have laughed at our original "gas'' experi- 
ence, but we were faithfully following out our instructions, 
and have sworn vengeance on the author of the "one whiff" 
theory if we ever catch him. Later in the morning we 
found that several of our non-coms had been badly gassed, 
a shell having landed right in the mouth of their "bivvy" 
while they were still asleep; and it was no joke in their 
case, nor is any case of real "gassing" a joke. They were 
in a Base Hospital for many weeks before their eyes and 
lungs fully recovered. 

This was in the support line, where, we found, there was 
little to do and little excitement. The only danger was 
from shells, and very few were killed by them back here, for 
the railroad bank afforded good protection, and the men 
stuck to it as much as they could. As one of the British 
officers then said: "War consists of long periods of intense 
boredom punctuated by short periods of intense fear." 
That was what surprised us then — that the British seemed 
to be utterly bored by the war. It was an anti-climax to 
all we had ever read and anticipated, — we expected that 
going to the front would mean plunging into a seething 
cauldron of turmoil and death. Instead we found a lot of 
bored Englishmen living in a railroad bank like hoboes, an- 
noyed rather than affected by the casual shelling. The 
greatest surprise of anything was the fact that with so many 
shells exploding, so few people ever got hurt. Listening to 



Trench Life 29 

the distant rumbling of the guns and shells from back at 
Saulty, I had pictured wholesale death being dealt by every 
explosion, and on this first day behind the railroad bank we 
saw dozens of bursts and no one ever hit. We were taught to 
drop flat if a shell came close and so have a good chance of 
being safe from anything but a direct hit. We had occasion 
to try it several times ; it seemed to work all right, and ap- 
parently all a man need do was to drop flat, and cease to 
worry about shelling. We had yet to see some direct hits. 
When we had been through a little concentrated shell fire, 
out on an open field or even in a trench, and had learned to 
know what it could do, we lost our early ignorant reckless- 
ness. In other words, we were so relieved that "the front" 
was not as bad as advertised that we did not give it credit 
for being as bad as it was. We had always assumed that 
an experienced man would be cooler under fire than a green 
man, and this is true on the surface, for a man's determina- 
tion and will power may grow ; but as far as real inward 
feelings are concerned, I believe that the longer a man is 
in the game the more nervous he becomes. The accumu- 
lated strain of oft-repeated shellings wears on his nervous 
system, even while his external demeanor is getting more 
calm by force of habit. 

In the evening we set out for the front line, crossing the 
railroad, and continuing forward along a rough path between 
shell holes for a short distance; then dropping into a com- 
munication trench knee deep in water, crossing a branch rail- 
road track in a cut — which we did in a hurry, on advice 
that it was a favorable place for a chance spurt of machine 
gun fire — and finally came to the trenches themselves. Our 
inspection of the company sector during the next day, added 
to our impression that the war was not "living up to the 
bill-boards." Nothing whatever was happening, and it was 
really impossible to realize that these commonplace trenches 
were different from the familiar training imitations. "No 
Man's Land" contained no feature of especial interest, so 
far as could be seen. It was a flat, grass-covered plain, 
sloping down to a little hollow where there were some 
ruined buildings, and sloping up again to the enemy po- 



30 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

sitions. The opposing trenches were much farther apart 
than I had expected, in fact, they were more so than usual, 
because neither party wanted the hollow, with the enemy 
looking down on them from the hill. 

We had always thought that if a man stuck the top of his 
head a few inches above the parapet it would almost certainly 
be shot off. Finding that our English friend's head was not 
blown off, we soon began to look out across the parapet 
ourselves, and since there happened to be no snipers busy 
that particular afternoon, we soon completely discounted the 
sniping stories we had heard, and found ourselves leaning 
head and shoulders over the parapet, smoking our pipes as 
if we had owned the place. Well, we had "beginners' luck," 
but I have thought since that if I had been killed then I 
would have died more a fool than a hero. After a little 
more experience, and after hearing a bullet "zing" into the 
parados near us a few times, we learned that neither extreme 
is the truth ; that a man can perhaps "get away with it" nine 
times out of ten. but that doesn't make the tenth time a myth, 
and that a man docs neither himself nor his country any good 
by taking fool chances when nothing is to be gained. I 
have had to do much more dangerous things many times 
since then ; but 1 would not now take that risk uselessly for 
a thousand dollars. 

Going in and coming out were the most nerve-trying parts 
of trench life, excluding special "shows," of which more 
later. All movement had to be carried on at night ; no 
lights or smoking were allowed, the group had to be strung 
out a little so as not to offer too concentrated a target for a 
chance shell, aiul it required considerable care and inge- 
nuity to avoid getting lost. The area between the front 
line and the rearmost heavy guns was shelled regularly every 
night, with especial attention to cross-roads. It was never 
severe enough to prevent traftk, but alwa3's severe enough 
to make a man rightly feel that he might get hit at any 
minute. We always hurried past crossroads, and for the 
rest of it one place was as good as another. It was pure 
luck. The constant surprise was that luck was so generally 
good. The front trenches were disturbed very little at 



Trench Life 31 

night on the whole, and it was a positive rcHef to get there 
and drop down behind the parapet after two hours on top of 
the ground exposed to shells. 

We had no sooner reached our billets after our observa- 
tion trip than we were ordered back up with the entire bat- 
talion, which was split up among the various adjoining bat- 
talions of the Guards. One American platoon was joined to 
each British Company so that a company was with a bat- 
talion, and the battalion was spread over an entire brigade. 
It was an ideal arrangement by which we could get the ex- 
perience of doing the job instead of merely observing it, 
while at the same time avoiding as yet the independent re- 
sponsibility for the defense of the sector. Each platoon 
spent part of its tour in the reserve or support and part in 
the front line. Lieutenant Titus* platoon and mine went to 
the reserve, where dugouts and "bivvies" built into the bank 
of a "sunken road" composed the position, supplemented by 
a trench system which could be instantly reached if an at- 
tack threatened. We joined the Coldstream Guards lieuten- 
ant who was attached to us as adviser in an old Ilun dugout, 
which was indeed worthy of admiration both for its safety 
and comfort. Of course, it was on the wrong side of the 
road for our use — a dugout's origin can always be deter- 
mined by noticing toward which direction it opens — but it 
was so deep that a direct hit would hardly jar the ground. 
The Boche was certainly a prize dugout builder. It was a 
manifestation of his thoroughness and willingness to take 
infinite pains to promote safety. The Americans have suf- 
fered from their failure to expend enough labor on protec- 
tion. Perhaps it was to our advantage that we never got the 
dugout habit, or we might not have been so successful in 
the later open warfare, but there were times when we might 
well have done more. All the decent dugouts I was ever 
in were originally British, French or Boche. We never 
stayed long enough in one place nor had patience enough to 
build them. 

An attack — "going over the top" — inspires war corres- 
pondents, authors and poets to shed over it a glamour of ro- 
mance, and generally to attribute a great deal more enthusi- 



32 A Blue R'uh/c Memoir 

asm to the ixuiiciixints than they really have. A stubborn 
defense, outpost duty, raiding, patrolling— any of these in- 
cidents call forth literary elTorts, in which the soldiers, no 
matter how much they may hate the job. always appear in 
print as craving for more. But 1 have yet to meet the man 
who dares to claim that any soldier ever enjoyed "night 
fatigues" in the front areas. I have yet to meet either a 
poet or a liar who could rise high enough in his respective 
profession to make readers thrill with the thought of them 
or to say that a soldier ever liked them. /Ml soldiers think 
of such "parties" profanely. I found this out on the first 
night after we reached the sunken road, when we were or- 
dered to carry rations up to the front tine platoons. 

Each man slung over his shouUlers a pair of sandbags 
filled with the food, carried his arms and ammunition as 
well, and th.en for a long haul through the mud and darkness 
to the front line, with the potential shelling always a mental 
factor even when they were not actually dropping" near us. 
Then long stretches of trench, with the bulky bags bumping 
on the curves, before we reached the right platoon : then 
back again to the sunken road, wondering several times if 
we were on the right track. No casualties, not terribly 
dangerous, but exhausting, nerve-wearing, generally mean. 
The fights we were in we will talk about for the rest of our 
lives, but the thought of some of our night working parties 
arouses all that is ugliest in our dispositions. And yet with- 
out these jobs the exciting spicy events could never have 
won the war, and they deserve a place in the record of our 
events. 

The next night found us in the front line, having re- 
lieved two j~)latoons of L Co. with little trouble. At last our 
own "outfit" was holding its own little section of the long 
ditch we had heard so much about, and there was not a man 
who did not feel proud to be there, and feel that he had 
now reached the point when his life was worth while. The 
men were in the game now. and were willing to play it hard, 
and ever}- man was determined to show the veteran Tom- 
mies that we were just as good if not better. Nevertheless, 
it was their first night at the verv front, aiul many of them 



Trench Life 33 

were nervous, peering out across "No Man's Land" in 
readiness for advancing Boche. It was then that, in com- 
mon with the rest of the officers and non-coms, I learned a 
psychological fact that has helped me over many a bad place 
— that the best cure for nervousness is the necessity of com- 
batting nervousness in others. It was absolutely necessary 
that we should appear calm, not merely for our reputations, 
but in order to keep down the men's nerves. And how we 
did have to camouflage ! Sergeant Bolton and I went along 
from post to post, stopping at each one long enough to "kid 
them along" a little as well as to inspect the practical end of 
things. I acquired an artificially nonchalant drawl in order 
to conceal the tenseness that my natural voice might have 
betrayed, and we forced ourselves to hum a tune or tell 
each other jokes when we were in the men's hearing. The 
result was that before we realized it, we had really lost our 
nervousness ; had, in effect, bluffed ourselves by bluffing 
the men ; and I have never forgotten that lesson. I believe 
almost every officer except the rare few who never were 
nervous, has had about the same experience. 

Trench life is not without humor, as Capt. Bairnsfather 
has amply demonstrated, and it is fully appreciated when it 
does break out. The Guards used to have a new password 
every night, often the name of some British notable, or some 
English town. One night we were with them they politely 
made "Washington" the password, not merely as a courtesy 
but so our men could better remember it than a strange 
name. A determined young Italian in our outfit challenged 
one of the Guard Officers as he was making his rounds, 
"Washington," he replied and started to advance. "Halt!" 
shouted the Italian again. "You no say 'Gcorga Wash,' 
dama you no pass." Failure to prove knowledge of the 
first name evidently seemed a suspicious circumstance. 

It was not only the Italians who furnished the amuse- 
ment, however. One native American backwoodsman was 
standing on the fire-step, and was hit square in the chest by 
a Very light, which was so nearly burnt out that it did not 
even burn him, but it certainly did startle him. He fell 
back into the trench, shouting that he was "gassed" — why 



34 yl Blue Ridge Memoir 

he chose that theory rather than "shot" heaven knows — 
and had to be picked up bodily and set on his feet. He was 
asked why he didn't dodge when he saw it coming at him. 
"Well, suh," he explained, "you see it so't o' cha'med me." 

The evening after the relief had taken place, a patrol to 
inspect our wire entanglements was decided upon. The ne- 
cessity was not very great, but we decided it would be well to 
get used to patrolling before a necessity arose for some 
more dilTicult patrol, and the wire was about the nearest 
objective available. There was a vast difference in one's 
state of mind about being in the front trench, and being in 
"No Man's Land." There had been a sort of hoodoo thrown 
about the latter that it was well to get rid of at once, for in 
reality it was often safer to be out in front than in some 
places far behind. Later, in the autumn drives, the hoodoo 
disappeared, because half the time you didn't know what 
was "No Man's Land" and what was within your front 
positions, but in the trench warfare, it seemed to have an es- 
pecial "spookiness" about it. 

We notified the platoons on our Hanks, so that they would 
not hre if they saw us, and crawled out over the parapet, 
being careful not to show our forms above the general line 
of the dirt. There were hve of us altogether ; four \'anks 
and a sergeant of the Irish Guards; three had rifles with 
fixed bayonets, and two had revolvers, while each man 
carried a bomb in his pocket. We traveled on our bellies, 
wriggling along like snakes, so that no one could have seen 
us until we were almost upon them, and stopped every few 
yards to look and listen. That was the approved methotl for 
short distance work, as the Boche generally went pretty 
low, and he who is closest to the ground sees first. We 
wormed our way out to the wire, found it in fair condition 
and left three men there, while two of us crawled through 
the wire to look on a little farther. W'e thought we heard 
something going on down in tlie valley, but could not make 
certain. We crawled up a little farther, strained our ears 
trying to catch any slight sound that might mean an enemy 
patrol, and finally decided it must have been imagination. 
We rejoined the men at the wire, and waited there in case 



Trench Life 35 

a party should come out to cut the wire, but after stiffening 
ourselves for another half hour on the damp ground, we 
decided to return. Nothing whatever had occurred and we 
had spent over an hour in covering two or three hundred 
yards, so our venture was neither wildly exciting nor re- 
markably successful, but was perhaps more typical than 
most accounts of patrolling, for it was more of a coincidence 
than a commonplace when two opposing patrols met. 

We had, at least, accomplished our purpose of taking the 
novelty otf of crawling around "out in front" and I could 
not say that any of us were especially anxious to strike 
trouble on our first experiment. Moreover, the Irishman, 
who was a veteran at the game, seemed as little anxious to 
do so as any of us, which we can the better understand now 
that we also know what it is to be "fed up." 

That was the first and last time I ever patrolled flat on 
the ground, for in our later attacks the distances were too 
great, the time too great a factor, and the respective posi- 
tions of ourselves and the Boche too vaguely known to 
allow any such elaborate precautions. We just had to go 
where we had to and take a chance, only dropping and 
crawling when we actually saw something or were fired upon. 
I have often thought that if I had that first patrol to do over 
again, I would rather risk walking right out to the wire and 
coming back, for the compensating advantage of getting rid 
of the job so much the sooner. Advocates of extreme pre- 
cautions fail to figure the time element ; that if a place is dan- 
gerous, it is a good thing to do your business quickly and 
get back to safety. 

So drifted on our life with the British — not over strenu- 
ous, but exceedingly watchful and careful while in the 
trenches ; full of the most strenuous training while back in 
billets. We had conquered our early nervousness, and 
already trench life was commonplace. It was on our next 
tour at the front that we learned how suddenly the common- 
place could change to the intense and terrible. 

We started up from Saulty one hot Sunday afternoon, 
with the regimental band playing, a movie machine grinding 
as we swung along past the chateau that was Regimental 



36 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

H. O. and we entrained on the little narrow gauge as if 
going to a picnic. The relief was accomplished with little 
trouble ; the next day was quiet and eventless. The men 
basked in the sun in their firebays, only the sentries on the 
alert, the rest sleeping, eating crackers, smoking and sighing 
with boredom. Only one sentry per post was required in 
the day; at night there were two sentries looking over the 
parapet, and an additional guard at each end of the bay to 
prevent a stealthy raid along the trench from the vacant 
stretches. The men stayed constantly in their bays, awake 
at night and sleeping by turns by day. Company headquar- 
ters was in the "local support," a short section of trench a 
few hundred yards back a communication trench from the 
front line. One or two platoons were generally kept back 
in this local support and the remaining two or three put in 
the front. The officers ate and slept, when opportunity of- 
fered, at the Company Headquarters, and took turns in the 
front trench, two being up there during the night and one 
during the day. At morning and evening "stand to," and 
when an attack threatened, all the officers were, of course, 
in the firebays. 

In the pre-dawn hours of the morning of the 13th, Lt. 
Parkins and myself happened to be on duty, and were walk- 
ing slowly up and down the trench, inspecting the positions 
and the alertness of the sentries. The British batteries be- 
hind us put over a short bombardment, and no sooner had it 
ceased than the Boche opened up on us with H. E.'s and 
minnewerfers. We had experienced plenty of casual shell- 
ing before this, but this was our first barrage and it was 
ranged almost to perfection. The "Minnie" is a terrible 
thing. Falling slowly from a high range, it can drop into a 
trench more easily than the ordinary shell, and in the day- 
time can actually be seen falling drunkenly through the 
air. The concussion alone is terrific, not to mention the 
scatter of the fragments. They dropped into one bay after 
another with amazing rapidity ; the air and the very ground 
shook under them, so that men would be knocked down and 
shaken in every fibre even when they were not hit. Lt. 
Parkins and I had met in the middle of our sector when the 



Trench Life 37 

barrage started, and each started along the trench in oppo- 
site directions to pass the order to "stand to" and see that 
all men were prepared for the attack that might follow. I 
ran along the duck-boards, followed by my "runner," stop- 
ping but an instant at each post to see that the corporal had 
his men in hand and properly placed. My anxiety was 
needless ; every man of the platoon was right in his place on 
the fire-step, crouched down behind the parapet, his rifle 
or Lewis gun ready to fire. Those knocked down, if not 
severely wounded, were on their feet again and on the job in 
an instant. A man with a wound in the leg came frantically 
down the trench, limping as he ran, trying to find some kind 
of shelter, and almost ran into me. I tried to open a first-aid 
packet with more haste than skill and managed to slice up 
my hand so badly with the jagged tin that I got the bandage 
bloodied up before I could get it on him. A shell had landed 
right in his bay ; why the whole squad was not Wiped out is 
a miracle ; they were all knocked down and this man and 
three others wounded. Corporal Mannerberg, who com- 
manded the post, reorganized his men instantly, and I did 
not know until the afTair was all over that he was wounded 
in the wrist. 

The barrage lifted after fifteen minutes that seemed like 
hours, and played on the communicating and support 
trenches in order to prevent help from reaching the front. 
A wild dash from company headquarters had brought the 
other officers up to us and all was ready to give the Boche a 
good reception if he "came over." He did not come over 
on us and it was not until afterward that we learned that 
L Co. on our left had received and repulsed a severe raid. 

Isolating a particular post, from which the barrage was 
lifted while it continued to batter the rest of the sector, 
they rushed it with bombs and bayonets. Corporal Johnston 
had his leg shattered by a bomb, but continued to fire his 
rifle and encourage his men ; heavy fire was poured into the 
raiding party by the posts on the flanks in spite of the falling 
shells, and the Boche withdrew, leaving behind the body of 
their officer and a wounded private and dragging several 
other casualties with them. The corporal lost his leg but 



38 A B'htc Ridge Memoir 

was awarded the D. C. I\l. by the British commander; Pvt. 
ColHer, who was with him and carried him hack, got the 
Military Medal, and the integrity of the line which we had 
borrowed from the British was preserved. 

I Company had suffered from the barrage, though we did 
not catch the raid. My platoon had only wounds, no deaths, 
but the platoon on our left, adjoining L Company, had four 
men killed. Corj)oral Truxal had died as he had lived — ■ 
doing his duty and caring for his men. He had started to 
move his squad into the next bay where less shells were hit- 
ting, and, remaining in the more dangerous position until 
last, had been killed with the sentry just as the other six 
men had gotten around the curve ahead of them. 

Previous to this morning, we had lost only one man, hit by 
a chance shell. Now the Boche and ourselves had really met 
and drawn each other's blood, and we felt that we had met 
our first real test, and had not been found wanting. 

It was then for the first time that the British officers and 
men confessed to us how doubtful they had been as to how 
our green troops would perform under fire, and at the 
same time told us how delighted they had been with the 
coolness and steadiness that our men showed. That little 
affair that the Boche attempted to put across that morning 
did more to wipe out the friction between the English and 
the Americans than a month of conventions and speechmak- 
ings could have done. While the barrage was going on, a 
Sergeant from the "Tommies" on our right, who saw we 
were catching it and wondered if we held, ran down to my 
flank post to see if we were breaking and needed support. 
The answer given him by Corporal Puzo, as good an "Amer- 
ican" as ever bore an Italian name, ranks in my mind with 
any of the "famous sayings of American Commanders" that 
fill our history books ; "You don't need to worry any place 
us Yanks is at," and the veteran went back to his platoon 
satisfied, for the claim had been not only spoken, but proved. 
Every man had "stood to" according to the "trench orders" 
of the Guards Division, in spite of the temptation offered 
by the "bivvies" in the wall of the trench. 



Trench Life 39 

We have often debated since then whether the poHcy of 
standing ready to fire during a bombardment was necessary. 
Casualties from shell fire might have been saved by making 
use of all possible cover, as was, of course, done in all po- 
sitions except the very front line. The British, however, 
were unwilling to risk a raid reaching the trench when the 
men were not ready to shoot, and having the men trapped in 
dugouts and bombed or bayoneted without a chance to 
fight, which might result in the loss of the trench as well as 
in casualties. The Boche held to the "deep dugout" policy 
and doubtless suffered less from shelling, but were often 
caught by British raids at the instant the barrage lifted, be- 
fore they could pour out of their dugouts. The Americans 
while with the British necessarily obeyed British standing 
orders ; in the autumn drive the question did not arise. We 
took the best cover we could and we moved so much that 
the best was never deep enough to spoil our watchfulness. 
The system that some of our outfits adopted during the 
trench warfare was good, but risky, namely to advance from 
the trench and lie down just inside the wire, allowing the 
barrage to fall in an empty trench, while the men are in a 
ready position and avoid the shelling also. But this re- 
quires a very accurate barrage, or too many shells will be 
falling near the wire, and also involves an initial jump over 
the protecting parapet in which some would be hit, and 
greater exposure in case rifle fire from the Boche trenches 
followed the bombardment. I have never seen it done, but 
believe that if trench warfare had continued it would have 
become the American method. It is perhaps characteristic 
of the Tommy to hold on to his regular post regardless of 
what comes, of the Boche to stay protected at the risk of 
worse danger, more remote, and of the Yank to dodge the 
bombardment by advancing into the open. The British were 
skeptical of the advantage of leaving the partial protection 
of the trench for the hope of being out of range, and they 
had plenty of experience to quote in an argument. 

This is a somewhat technical digression from the narra- 
tive, but may serve to show the difficulties of deciding how 
to handle a situation in which some casualties are almost in- 



40 A B'uc Ridge Memoir 

evitable, and to show the folly of cryint,^ "useless casualties" 
without a full study of the situation. 

Be that as it may. our men had come through their hrst 
real test with a full measure of credit; had gained the ad- 
miration of the Tommies and greater confidence in them- 
selves, and were now hardened for the far greater tests 
that were to come when America "took the hit in her teeth" 
and started over the wooded hills to victory. 

Our Company was relieved by K Company the night after 
the attack, and took up the more secure life of the support, 
in one of the deep "sunken roads" which are so characteris- 
tic of that part of l^-ance, and were so useful to the troops 
of both sides. 

But support life, while less inten.se. was no "rest camp," 
for it is the support battalion that supi)lies the working 
parties for the much-hated night fatigues. This time the 
job was to move a large pile of gas projector tubes from the 
place where they were last fired to the location of the next 
.shoot. The "doughboys," as always, did the heavy work, 
and the Royal Engineers had to bury and camouflage the 
tubes before daylight. The tubes were all that two men 
could lift, the night was dark and the ground irregular, and 
as we were only two or three hundred yards behind the 
front line, the danger of detection and shelling was very real. 
The job took nearly four hours and the men were utterly 
exhausted by the time it was finished. Now and then a Very 
light would go up, or a tube would be dropped on another 
with a clang of metal that would awaken the echoes and 
then we would wait a minute in expectation of an answering 
shell, and breathe a sigh of relief when none came. 

\\'e had seen a small gas shoot put over by the British a 
few days before, and it was indeed a terrific thing. The 
projector combines the cloud idea and the gas .shell idea. It 
is an enormous cylinder, which shoots a short distance at a 
very high angle, and bursts with terrific force, releasing a 
small cloud of gas which drifts on with the wind. If "J^^ry" 
detects such an attack being prepared all hell is let loose on 
the place, hence the importance of camouflaging, and hence 



Trench Life 41 

calso an awful joke — caught in time to prevent it being seri- 
ous — on one of the K Company heutenants. 

This Heutenant was in charge of the section of support 
trench, on the lee-side of a hank, where we had so labori- 
ously placed the projectors the night before and, having 
brought with him from billets the habit of "policing up" on 
all occasions, cast his eye over the ground in search of the 
unsanitary and the unsightly. Now "camouflage," be it 
understood, does not generally consist of artistic and ingeni- 
ous tricks such as are shown in war pictures, but of rolls of 
chicken wire draped with brown or green burlap, very ragged 
and frowsy. "Police up that rubbish," the officer com- 
manded, and if he had not been politely but firmly restrained 
by the British N.C.O., the deadly projectors would have 
been exposed to the first Boche plane that came over. 

After two days in the support, we were relieved altogether, 
and a long night hike brought us to the narrow gauge, where 
the platoons, drifting in separately from their various posi- 
tions, reformed into their companies. The slow, puffing 
little train took us back to Saulty in the chill of the early 
dawn. The men, packed like sardines in the tiny cars, slept 
or smoked, their heads on the next man's stomach. We 
dragged ourselves into our billets, weary, dirty and un- 
shaven, but happy in the hope of a few days' real rest. 

We fell asleep, few even stopping to undress, and woke 
up in time for dinner to meet one of the worst discourage- 
ments that a soldier has to face. The order had come out for 
the Third Battalion to go in again that night, and our brief 
rest was turned again into a hurried preparation. As events 
turned out, it amounted to little ; we only went to the reserve 
position near Ransart, several miles from the line, and had a 
fairly restful time, but it took every ounce of reserve force 
a man had in him to start back in again and give up the 
expected rest without complaining. Then, as unexpectedly 
as we had gone in, we went out again. 



42 



CHAPTER III 
Life in the Bois 

WE had arrived in Erance at a time when alhed for- 
tunes were in a critical position ; the British had 
barely recovered from the terrific March offensive, and were 
necessarily more interested in avoiding casualties than in 
harassing the Boche. Their artillery and aviation maintained 
their usual supremacy, but the Infantry, who had borne the 
brunt of the great Hun drive, played it watchfully and 
doggedly, but very safe, and allowed "Jerry" to rule over 
No Man's Land rather than waste men in fruitless small 
encounters. Apparently it was a contest of patience and 
might last forever. The British might defeat the Boche in 
such a contest, but the Americans' best genius was for 
action. 

Then in July came the news from Chateau Thierry and 
big headlines every day thereafter until the whole Marne 
salient was flattened out. How it did cheer us up, and how 
we did like to hear our allies praise the Americans ! And by 
August there was a new feeling in the air, a new ofi^ensive 
spirit and a desire to end the war quickly, and rumors began 
to fly. The entire line was going to get out of the trenches 
and start forward on September 15th and keep going re- 
gardless of cost until the end was accomplished — this was 
about the favorite one at that time. And then the plans of 
an attack right in our own sector began to be talked of, and 
at first we were going to be in it. Then at the last minute we 
were pulled out and started southeast to join the rest of 
the American army. We left the reserve trenches at Ran- 
sart on a sudden order, and the next day the Guards went 
forward without us, for our time had not yet come, and we 
were needed to help form the First Army, which was already 
being collected and prepared for the greater drive which was 
to turn a "quiet sector" into the terrific final battle ground. 

We marched hurriedly that night, for we had several miles 
to go before we were altogether out of shell range, and the 
moon was so bright that a column on a white road made too 



Life In The Bo is 4J 

good a target for Boche bombers. Several times the rumble 
of motors would be heard overhead, and in an instant the 
whole battalion would be off the road, and lying still on the 
darker background of the bank until the plane had passed on 
out of hearing. About two hours after midnight we reached 
a small dirty village where we slept the rest of the night 
on barn floors, then on again the next day until we reached 
the valley of the Canche River, where we pitched tents in a 
cow pasture. It was a long, mean hike, but how good the 
green meadows and pastures looked after the desolation of 
the shell-holes and trenches ! Then we reached the little city 
of Prevent, where we rested two nights, the whole battalion 
billeted in a large brewery, and had baths, some real meals 
and a chance to see an excellent show by a British army 
troupe. 

These shows formed a prominent part of British "back 
area" life; the players had all served in the trenches and 
were for the most part actors by profession, and their value 
in making the rest periods really enjoyable and relaxing 
was inestimable. This particular show included a ridiculous 
jingly little song that ended up "Everybody happy in the 
old French trench," and this optimistic little sentiment be- 
came quite a byword in Company I, being often quoted later 
on, even when everybody had a hard time trying to stay 
happy. 

The regiment entrained, and the "British sector" became 
a memory. We passed Amiens, where the road had just 
been reopened, through Paris at night, and found ourselves 
heading toward Dijon the next morning. The Italians were 
jubilant with a false hope; we were aimed toward Italy, 
and they thought we were being sent to the Italian front. To 
their disappointment we landed near Chatillon-sur-Seine, 
and after enduring a severe thunderstorm, camped in a field 
next to a group of wooden barracks occupied by some Signal 
Corps troops. Then for the first time we saw a real, full- 
sized American Y. M. C. A. hut, and the ofificers slept on the 
stage at night. It cheered us up, for we thought that now that 
we were in the "American Sector," we would see something 
of the Y. M. C. A. besides the magazine advertisements, and 



44 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

would no longer wish in vain for cigarettes, hot chocolate, 
and the homelike influence we had read so much about. Not 
until later did we learn that the Y. M. C. A. was mainly for 
the S. O. S., and that the nearer we got to the line, and the 
more we needed the "Y" the less we would see of it. That 
night we felt deeply grateful to the "Y" and our inclination 
was all in its favor, but thereafter it was a great and deepen- 
ing disappointment to find that we only ran into it on such 
rare occasions as this, when we were temporarily near a big 
town, and to realize that the "Y" considered the needs of the 
fighting men less important than those of the non-combat- 
ants. 

A day's march up the valley of the Seine followed, the 
road winding along between the steep banks sprinkled with 
chateaux that reminded one of the castles of fairy tales and 
through little villages that seemed more like parts of Switz- 
erland than like the low-lying Northern France. The Seine 
at this point is a mere brook, and as we stopped for dinner 
in a meadow through which it lazily curved, most of the men 
refreshed themselves by a swim, splashing about and diving 
from the banks, as boyishly as only the American soldier 
can act. 

At dusk we arrived at the tiny village of Bellenod, a little 
cluster of houses on a rocky hillside that recalled the fa- 
miliar "hill pastures" of New England. Only our company 
was in the village, the battalion being split up among the 
neighboring communities, in order that camping space 
should not be overcrowded. After our turn in the trenches 
and our succession of long hikes, it seemed to us as though, 
in this far-ofif corner of the world, we had come upon a true 
rustic paradise. We were only the second American troops 
that had been in the region, and there was a spirit of cor- 
diality and obligingness among the villagers that was en- 
tirely lacking in the people of Pas de Calais who had been 
overrun with soldiers for four years. Here the men rested, 
drilled, and relaxed their souls in the evening by sitting in 
front of the small estaminet, drinking "vin rouge" and 
trying to talk to the natives. The Italians seemed to be 
even more at home than the others, for it was a part of 



Life In The Bois 45 

France in which there was apparently some admixture of 
Itahan blood and language and the Bellenod evenings re- 
sounded with Italian opera and ballads from the front of the 
mn. 

By virtue of an extremely slight knowledge of French I 
drew the job of "Acting Town Major/' which meant 'in 
plam English, the duty of negotiating with the local Mayor 
for the use and rental of such fields and billets as the troops 
required. In a town of considerable size, this duty generally 
falls upon a Major-hence the title-but Bellenod was a 
second heutenant-size town. I sought out '"le Maire" by 
way of making an official call. His Honor was very oblig- 
ing and loquacious, had a large dirty white mustache, and a 
large gold collar button where his collar should have been 
and altogether reminded me so much of the traditional "con- 
stabule of rural America that I had difficulty in preserv- 
ing the dignity that the occasion demanded. By way of 
diplomatic introduction, I offered a Cinco cigar, but, unlike 
his American counterpart, he shook his head and replied, 
Fume pas, to which his wife added, "II n'a fauts pas " I 
suspected that the lady's presence might have had something, 
to do with his statement that he didn't smoke, so tried him 
agam when we were alone, but his repeated refusal con- 
vmced me that his wife spoke truly, and here, indeed, must 
be the perfect husband! 

_ Our dreams of a long rest in the delightful Bellenod were 
interrupted by an order to prepare for prolonged field ma- 
neuvers. On the face of it, this looked as if we were merely 
going into another phase of our training for the rumored 
coming ofi^ensive, but it did not take us long to guess that 
this was a piece of camouflage, and that the prolonged ma- 
neuvers were to be against an enemy that was far from imag- 
inary. So we left Bellenod forever, and marched down the 
valley agam. A pleasant Sunday morning found the re-i- 
nient resting in a meadow near Chatillon. The band played 
Onward Christian Soldiers," and in a corner of the field 
the Catholics gathered for Mass, while on the other side of 
the camp the Protestant Chaplain held his services. It was 
one of those extra-peaceful occasions which live in a man's 



46 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

memory the more 1)ecause of their contrast with the noise 
and bustle of our ordinary days. A chilly night intervened 
before we entrained and hugh fires were lit, the men clus- 
tering about them, sleeping, smoking or talking, like the old 
"bivouacs" of Civil War stories, before the introduction of 
aircraft deprived the soldier of even this simple luxury. 
This was the last time we had uncovered fires after nightfall 
until the memorable evening of November 11th, for our 
next train ride brought us close enough to the front to make 
it unsafe. 

The next night inaugurated a period of secret movements, 
hiding in woods by day, and marching only at night. It 
was the old 'Tndian stuff," on a gigantic scale, for division 
upon division was being stealthily worked up nearer to the 
front, and with never a wagon or a soldier more than usual 
on the roads by day, or a light by night. The enemy may 
have learned a part of what was going on by spies, but I 
do not believe that their aviators reported a single thing out 
of the ordinary. 

lliis phase of our history is dramatic in retrospect, but 
was both monotonous and difficult in the doing. Idleness 
and uncertainty in the daytime, never knowing whether 
we would move the next day or not, and then the Lerrific 
hike through mud and rain almost all night to a new woods 
where our small attempts at comfort and shelter had to be 
begun anew, marked this period. 

We piled out of the train near Bar-le-Duc after dark, the 
night after we left Chatillon, and the first of this series of 
marches began. No one ever knew, on these marches, how 
long it would be, nor where we were going, which made 
them the more discouraging. On and on we marched in the 
dark, through deep woods, up hills and down again. Every 
hour we halted and fell out for ten minutes' rest, the men 
falling asleep on the wet ground, waking up shivering at the 
call to "get in shape" and throwing off the chill by the exer- 
tion of the next hour's marching. Finally we came to the 
"Bois" or patch of woodland, that was to be our stopping 
place. Only a narrow path entered the woods from the road, 
and the entire regiment had to enter it in single file, each 



Life In The Do is 47 

man hanging on the coat-tails of the man ahead of him to 
keep from getting lost. Loud and hilarious yelling accompa- 
nied this process — for noise, unlike light, was permissible — 
and the whole scene reminded one more of an entrance into 
some mysterious cavern than into an ordinary patch of for- 
est. The path was cut a little wider for the Transport and 
by daybreak not a man, animal or vehicle showed outside the 
edge of the woods. 

For five days we camped here, clearing out enough of the 
underbrush to make level places for the shelter tents. It 
reminded us of old vacation days in the Maine woods, and 
the I Company officers built a fine lean-to of boughs and 
shelter halves on the old camping-trip plan, with a bed of 
ferns. As we lay there smoking in the evenings it was diffi- 
cult indeed to realize that we were not on a mere ordinary 
camping trip, but in the daytime preparations for the battle 
went on in spite of our restricted conditions and the rattle 
of the automatic rifles and the bursting of hand grenades 
made the woods resound. 

As usual, we made our move in the night and in the rain, 
and received our orders at the last minute. We rolled packs, 
assembled on the road after dark, and then had one of those 
long, chilly, apparently needless waits before the command 
came to fall in and start on the march. Three French pri- 
vates reported to our battalion as instructors in the use of 
the Chauchat automatic rifle, and apparently the outfit they 
belonged to had followed the same short-sighted policy that 
American companies generally use in cases of "detached ser- 
vice," for the three specimens that they sent us were the 
worst-looking soldiers of any nationality that I have ever 
seen. Anyone who regarded them as typical must have had 
a low regard for the French army, for these fellows were 
undersized, dirty, unshaven and apparently half-witted. 
After their first sample of an American hike they left us as 
mysteriously as they had come, and whether they deserted, 
or reported back that our instruction was completed, we 
never knew nor cared. 

That hike was enough to discourage anyone, especially if 
he thought we did it every night. We had gone but a 



48 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

short distance, and were oflf the main road, on a steep and 
rough hack lane, when a terrific thunderstorm struck us. 
The rain came down on us in sheets, the ground was so 
sloppy that even our hoh-nails could not save us from much 
slipping and falling, and it was so dark that only the flashes 
of lightning told you whether you were in the column or off 
on a tangent by yourself. Several men sprained their ankles 
so badly that they never got back to the line again. No one 
knew the way except the officers at the head of the column, 
and it sometimes seemed doubtful if they did, so whenever 
any platoon got a little behind it would have to run to avoid 
leaving a gap and losing all those behind it. At last we came 
out again on the main road ; the rain had slackened, and we 
repaired our straggling formations, and marched into the 
village of Nancois-le-Petit, where, after another short delay, 
we got the regiment distributed among the various barns and 
haylofts that the town afforded, and got to sleep just before 
dawn. The Transport had had as rough a trip on the hilly 
roads as we had had on our would-be short-cut, and arrived 
even later, but we slept late, and had a larged combined 
breakfast and dinner, at about eleven o'clock. 

It was such nights as this that made men damn the In- 
fantry then, and that make men proud to have been in the 
Infantry now, as much as the days and nights of the drive 
itself. These are not the experiences that get into the news- 
papers, but they are hardly less exhausting than the ones 
that do. Reading an account of an attack, one would think 
our troubles started with the advance from the front line. 
It is to the greater glory of the Infantry to know what long 
miles and sleepless nights had been endured before it even 
got to the point where its work began to show. 

Four days we remained at Nancois-le-Petit, where we had 
a chance to go through some tactical problems that were of 
more benefit than usual by reason of the similarity between 
the terrain there and the ground over which we actually 
fought. Most of our training in attack had been on too lim- 
ited and cramped a scale, but here we had a whole wooded 
hillside, and could get more of a picture of the real thing 
than we had gotten on a mere drill field. True, we had seen 



Life In The Bo is 49 

real action with the British, but that was stationary trench 
about to talie part in. 

On the evening of September 12th, we formed for another 
move understanding that we were going up to the line, 
though where, or with what object, we did not know We 
were met just outside the town by a train of French motor 
rucks that were to take us up, and started to load the nten 
.nto them. They squeezed and packed as tight as th.v 

Zr', A ","' """'' ' '1™^'" °' °" battalion was left 
behind and had to follow the next morning. By some error 
an msufficent number of trucks had been arranged for 
Add to th,s the fact that we arrived at our destination sev- 
"WhLT If T"^ 'I'' ='PP™P--'^'«"ess of the famous line 
What though the soldier knew someone had blundered" is 
seen. As was generally the case when something went wrong 
.t was someone high up who did the blundering and the 

:r:;f:r;r°"'^"^"'''°^^'''°^'^-"--'-^- 

had"no 7ir T^ ''"'° "'' ^'- *^"^''=' ''"^<=' '" "hich we 
had no fightmg, but two days of terrible marching Our 

part m ,t was m a sense a farce, but the distance and speed 

hat we had to travel was no joke, and if the attacking d,VN 

plenty to do. Our d,v,s>on was in the reserve, and our regi- 
ment had the special mission of striking in at the side of the 
sahent and cuttmg off the retreat of the enemy who v re 
dr,ven back m the main attack at the point. The speed of 
the attack, combined with the delay of our truck rain 

a^Xu^u^ """'^'°^^*^''*- '- --■-'"' 
\Ve piled out of our truck in the morning near Woimby 
on he bank of the Meuse, and after a hasty break fasT of' 
CO d ^^anned Willie" and crackers, started Lo .h had 
be n German terntory twenty-four hours before. We had 
no the shghtest ,dea whether we were one mile or twenw 
behn,d the front Ime, but not a sound of battle was heard 
VVe saw Austnan prisoners conting back in droves escorted 
by French; and some French artillery shared the roads w h 



50 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

us. All along the way we passed signboards printed in 
German ; Boche equipment of all kinds, and in the little 
villages and hurriedly abandoned camps, their fires were 
still burning. Some of the boys even had the good fortune 
to find beer in the dugouts. At one point we passed a solid 
belt of barbed wire entanglements at least sixty yards wide, 
in front of trenches, and I believe this was the Hindenburg 
Line, which, before the drive, was a reserve position a few 
miles in rear of the front trenches. 

We made a halt later in the afternoon in a little valley and 
cooked some more of our emergency rations before darkness 
should preclude fires. Then "Officers' Call" sounded on the 
bugle, and we assembled at a road corner for orders for the 
night. A French lieutenant dashed up on a white horse, sa- 
luted and started in: "Monsieur le Colonel," which was all 
that any of us understood until it was translated, but it lent 
a touch of the dramatic to the scene. 

Our battalion was to advance over the hill in front of us 
and take up a position with outposts for the night, after 
which we would receive further orders for the next day. It 
was pitch dark, and no one knew anything about the lay of 
the land or the distance or position of the enemy. In a 
general movement on the main front, the direction of the 
enemy was, as a rule, obvious, but as our mission was to get 
in behind a retreating detachment of Boche, in the salient, 
the directions were almost reversed. As this had not been 
clearly explained to us, it was no wonder that the idea wasn't 
correctly carried out, but it was lucky that the Boche were 
well on the run and did not counter-attack that night. L and 
M Companies were in the front of our battalion, and es- 
tablished outposts on the wrong side, the rest of the men 
sleeping peacefully with their backs toward the enemy. I 
and K Companies thought they were behind them but were 
actually alongside and contented themselves with a few gas 
sentries facing the allied lines ! 

The commanders of I and K Companies went to find 
Battalion Headquarters ; they couldn't find it nor could they 
find their own companies when they tried to come back to 
them, so they slept by themselves in the middle of the field 



Life In The Bo is 51 

several hundred yards nearer the enemy than the whole rest 
of the regiment. Luckily the Boche were by this time far 
enough away so that no harm was done, but it gave us a 
shock when we found out the situation, and many a laugh 
afterwards. 

Early in the morning we started back, through Lavigne- 
ville, and La Croix sur Meuse, and back to our starting 
place, the hike back being nearly as hard as the hike for- 
ward. Such was our small share in the wiping out of the 
St. Mihiel salient ; if the Boche had put up the resistance 
that was expected, our part might have been greater. 

We went back in trucks and camped in an orchard near 
Chaumont-sur-Aire, a village on the main road from Bar-le- 
Duc to Verdun, but the next day it was a case of "move 
again." We marched a short distance to the main road, and 
were loaded once more into the small French trucks — this 
time with great despatch and efficiency. It was a bright 
starlit night, and the road showed up clear and white ahead 
of the camions. I did not then know where we were going, 
nor where the road led. In the truck ahead of me the men 
were singing the old song, now so literally true, "We don't 
know where we're going, but we're on our way." I was sit- 
ting on the front seat with the driver — a typical bewhiskered 
"Frog" with his head hunched down into the collar of his 
faded blue coat. I asked him where we were going. "Ver- 
dun," was the reply. 

As the camion sped along, all the tragedy and the glory of 
Verdun came to my mind. This was the highway from the 
rest of France to the beleaguered fortress at the point of the 
salient. It was up this very road that the continual trains of 
ammunition and rations, and the ambulances, had passed, 
when the battle was at its worst, and the railroads had been 
cut off, and it was along here that thousands of the best of 
France's soldiers had marched to take their turn in the most 
critical part of France's struggle. The crisis had passed, 
but, while defeat had been staved off, victory had not yet 
been gained, and now it was our turn to travel up the same 
road in the same cause. 

We did not actually go in until ten days later, and then it 



52 ^l Blue Ridgc Memoir 

was at several miles distance from Verdun itself, but that 
night I thought we were going straight up to the town itself, 
and it was a great surprise to me when the train stopped 
near Souilly, and we once more took up our life in the 
woods. We knew at least by that time that some great 
movement was closely impending, and expected it even 
sooner than it actually came. We passed so many nights 
under the impression that we were just on the edge of a bat- 
tle, that the feeling almost got stale in our minds, and when it 
became a reality the edge of the excitement was already worn 
off ; and, as usual in human affairs, the reality was less excit- 
ing than the apprehension. 

We were well accustomed to woods camping by this time, 
and made ourselves reasonably comfortable in short order. 
Being now nearer to the front, the secrecy was the more 
strict, and not a man left the woods during daylight. Sen- 
tries at the ends of all paths enforced the order. 

Our life in the woods was monotonous on the whole, but 
fairly restful as long as we stayed in one place. While at 
Souilly we went through some combat maneuvers that were 
fairly true to the reality that followed, since so much of our 
fighting was in the woods, but it was too cramped up, and 
on too small a scale. No one had a very definite and ac- 
curate picture of what the real thing would be, in spite of 
many lectures and explanations by officers who had been in 
the summer attacks, and our maneuvers before the fight at 
best compare very unfavorably with those engaged in after 
the armistice, when they were not nearly so important. We 
knew that we were on the verge of a big drive, and had 
frequent conferences, at which, thanks to the wisdom of the 
Major, the sergeants who commanded the platoons, as well 
as the officers, were present. The stay at Souilly is chiefly 
remembered by the men for one evening when the whole reg- 
iment was led on a sort of "follow the leader" stunt through 
the woods. The object was to see if we could "keep closed 
up" and avoid splitting up and losing part of the outfit, and 
it was a thorough enough test, for we had double-timed 
through the woods, jumped logs, and turned sharp corners 
aplenty before we finally regained the main road and re- 
organized the column. 



Life In The Bois 53 

In a few days, as usual, we had another night move, this 
time an all-night affair. The distance to our destination was 
not so great, but because of the heavy traffic on the Verdun 
highway we were ordered to go by a circuitous back road — 
one of the many instances w^here the Infantry got the rough 
end of the deal. 

Frequent delays and unexplainable halts retarded our 
progress. It became very cold, and the ground was wet, but 
as the night wore on and the men grew more tired, it got so 
that they would drop down and fall sound asleep the minute 
we fell out, and have to be roughly awakened when the signal 
came to fall in again. We thought that we were going di- 
rectly into the line, and that we might "go over" without 
even stopping to rest from this hike, but everyone was so 
weary that he cared little whether we did or not at the time. 
At one time we went on the main road for a mile or two, not 
far from Verdun itself, and heard the Allied guns steadily 
pounding away. 

"That's Jerry getting his 'iron rations,' " remarked one of 
the men. "Iron ration" was the term used for "emergency ra- 
tion" when we were in the British sector. Thank Heaven for 
the humorist that almost every platoon includes. That fel- 
low kept the whole crowd laughing for an hour with puns 
and sarcastic comments on things in general, when it was a 
choice between laughing and cursing. What he said about 
the army and his "superior officers," from G. H. Q. down 
to the right guide, would have been enough to hang him if 
set down in cold print, but it made everybody feel better, 
and I would not have stopped him for the world. 

We left the road as dawn was breaking, cut across a field, 
through a marsh and up a steep hill into another woods. We 
found we were not quite in the right place, but we had 
already been on our feet so long that it was decided to "flop" 
right there and locate our correct station later. It was 
broad daylight when we at last unrolled packs for a few 
hours' sleep ; getting up again at noon to march another mile 
or so around the edge of the "Bois" to our assigned place, 
where we could meet our rolling kitchens and enjoy a hot 
meal. 



54 A Blue RJd(jc Memoir 

We were now in the "Lanipire Woods," where the French 
maintained a permanent camping place for outfits just going 
into, or coming out from, the Verdun Hues. The small 
growth was cleared away, the large trees being left to pro- 
vide sufficient concealment from airplanes, so that the place 
resembled a \)^v\\ or i)icnic grounds. We put our "pup-tents" 
in the best covered parts of the grounds, and ]>repared to 
make the most of the days of rest that we knew would be 
very few. 

Most of the men wrote home every day during that short 
period, since each day might be our last chance to write until 
after the drive, which meant that it might be the last chance 
in this life. Some letters were also written to be mailed only 
in case the writer was killed, but I don't think that as many 
did that as might be expected. Combined with the necessity 
for unusual care and strictness in censoring, this outburst 
of mail kept the officers busy. 

The time for training in any large way was now past, but 
there was much to be done in the way of preparation for 
our particular mission. Equipment of all kinds was given a 
last inspection, gas masks were thoroughly gone over, and a 
lot of grenades of various types issued and tried out. Pyro- 
technics were distri1)uted to the company and platoon com- 
manders, a code given us for their use, and a demonstration 
arranged by a French lieutenant. This was one matter in 
which we had received little instruction, but would have 
succeeded well enough nevertheless if the code had been 
simpler and the rockets and flares less varied. But we were 
compelled to carry types of rockets that were not even in- 
cluded in the code, or that only the higher commanders 
would be likely to use, with the result that it was generally 
hard to find the few useful ones when needed. 

Maps were issued to all the officers, with the Boche posi- 
tions and the barrage lines marked on them and the whole 
plan, with the maps, carefully gone over with the non-coms, 
and to some extent with the privates as well ; all that was still 
unknown was the day and hour. 

On the evening of the 23rd we prepared to move, and had 
already fallen in and joined the other battalions when we 



Life In The Bo is 55 

were halted, and after a wait of nearly two hours, were told 
to return to our camping place. What change of plan was 
made, we never knew, but it was only a matter of one day, 
for the next evening we did move. 

A lady who was in the entertainment work of the Y. M. 
C. A. gave some sort of a recital in a natural woods theatre 
that afternoon, and I think the entire regiment attended. I 
have only the haziest recollection of what she said or did, 
but whatever it was, it well served tlic purpose of taking our 
minds off the coming drive for a few minutes of relaxation. 
The show was no sooner over than Major Emory and the 
company commanders received a hasty order, and left by au- 
tomobile to reconnoitre the front and get familiar with the 
lay of the land at our "jumping off" place, the troops to fol- 
low later in the evening. 1'his left me temporarily in com- 
mand of Company I, as two officers who were senior to me 
were away at school, and it was a great relief when Lieuten- 
ant France joined us again the next day after a dangerous 
and tiring night, for I had no great desire to command more 
than a platoon unless I had to. 

We left the Lampire woods late in the evening of the 
24th, expecting a comparatively short journey, but when we 
got up to the main road we found it so clogged up, with a 
continuous stream of field artillery going forward, and an 
intermittent stream of trucks and ambulances going to the 
rear, that it was almost impossible for Infantry to get 
through. We struggled along, in and out among the cais- 
sons, often getting clear over into the mud, and several 
times stopping altogether until the jam was a little bit cleared, 
and we scarcely averaged two kilometers an hour. The last 
village we went through was a battered ruin called "Ger- 
mainville," and we entered the Bois Rourrus, an old French 
strong point of the early Verdun days, where we unrolled 
our packs under the open sky and snatched a few hours 
sleep — our last sleep before we "went over." It was as 
peaceful as any of the woods we had slept in during the 
past month, but the Bois Bourrus was soon to become a 
place to be remembered, as long as 320th men shall live, as 
a place of death and horror. 



56 



CI I A ITER IV 
The Big Drive. 

EARLY in tlic afternoon of the 25th, Major Emory held 
a meeting of officers and non-coms, and told us that 
"]) Day" might he the morrow and might be the day after. 

A few hours later word came that we would leave the 
woods late that night, and "go over" in the morning. The 
Second Battalion was to form the assaulting waves, our bat- 
talion th.e support, and the b'irst the reserve. Lt. Titus and 
I were ordered to take fifty men from 1 Company and form 
a "mopping-up" wave, to follow just behind the Second 
Battalion. It was an eleventh hour order, but we hurriedly 
picked our men. had them turn over their automatic rifles to 
the rest of the company, and take an extra quantity of bombs 
in exchange, and divided them into two sections, so that we 
could each run a small unit instead of combining on a 
larger one. As we stuffed our pockets with bombs, and 
explained our mission to the men, we reminded ourselves of 
some mob of anarchists or blackhanders. The men saw 
the humor of the situation and were keen for the excitement, 
acting like a lot of boys on a "pirates" game. Our job was 
to bomb dugouts, search out snipers who had hidden while 
the first wave passed over, and in general to kill or capture 
any small remnants of opposition that the assaulting waves 
did not stop for. 

We had eaten an early supper, and an additional round of 
hot coffee and bacon was ordered for 10 o'clock, as it was 
our last chance for a hot "chow." The kitchens did their 
best to keep their fires low, and avoid sparks, but they 
showed some light, and whether this caused the trouble, or 
whether the Boche simply knew that this woods was a likely 
place to catch troops in, we never knew. The men were 
drinking their cofifee, lying on the ground in little groups 
near their stacked arms, and trying to get an hour's rest be- 
fore we started off. Without an instant's warning. Hell 
cut loose! C-r-r-ash ! A big H.E. came tearing through the 
trees, and landed within a few yards of battalion head- 



TJic Big Drive S7 

quarters. Another followed in about thirty seconds ; it 
landed square in the midst of a meeting of L Company non- 
coms, and killed or wounded every corporal and sergeant in 
one of its platoons. More followed, striking in different 
places all over that corner of the woods, until it was a perfect 
pitch-dark maelstrom of flying shell fragments and pieces 
of trees, with men running about frantically trying to get out 
of the way. and wounded men groaning and crying for help 
on all sides. 

There was an elaborate system of enormous French dug- 
outs in the side of the hill a few yards away, and the men 
made for the entrances, some by platoons, and many indi- 
vidually. Our battalion still had a little time before it had 
to move out, and by that time the shelling might stop. The 
Second Battalion, which had to get started right away, was 
in a less battered part of the woods, and moved down to the 
road at once, getting away with far less casualties than we 
had, although not without some confusion. If our problem 
had been merely to minimize the casualties and keep the or- 
ganization together in what shelter we could find, it would 
have been fairly simple, but here we were still five kilo- 
meters from the jumping-off place, and a whole regiment to 
organize for an attack at dawn. We had no time to think 
of anything but getting each unit to its appointed place in 
time to go over when "H hour" arrived. The bombard- 
ment could not have come at a more perfect psychological 
moment for the Boche, and to my mind the fact that the 
320th Infantry made their attack at all, was even more of 
a feat than anything that we did after the drive actually 
started. It was only the frantic and herculean labors of the 
officers and non-coms in getting the different units together 
in the darkness and under the heavy shelling, and the devo- 
tion to duty of the vast majority of the men in coming out 
of the dugouts when ordered, that saved the regiment from 
being beaten before the battle began. I had gone over to the 
Second Battalion to find out just how I was to join on to 
their rear on the road, and was on my way back to the 
"moppers-up" when the shelling began. I ran toward the 
place I had left them, dropping flat whenever a shell came 



58 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

near me, and jumping up again as soon as it had burst. Once 

I got on the wrong patli, and had to stop and look at my 
compass, and then turn back to the last fork. I passed the 
place where the first ones had hit. and will never forget the 
cry: "O God, help me!" that came from under the bushes. 
But I couldn't stop; that was the medical men's job and mine 
was to get fifty men collected out of different dugouts and 
out of the woods in time to go to the jumping-off place be- 
hind the Second Battalion. We could not wait until our 
battalion started, for we were practically lent to the assault 
battalion, and might miss our function altogether if we once 
lost them. There was a fortunate lull in the shelling, and by 
dint of frantic searchings, shouts, exhortations and some 
threats. Lieutenant Titus and Sergeant Barnhart and I 
finally got about forty-five of our original fifty men together 
and led them to the road, where we were lucky enough to 
find the approximate end of the battalion. 

Then they began shelling the road — not as heavy stuff 
as in the first bombardment, but bad enough. It is easy 
enough to say to "take open formations under shell fire," 
but what if there is only one road out, and everybody has to 
use it at once? The men were in solid column of squads, in 
places even two columns abreast, and often not even moving 
on account of some jam up ahead. Whenever one would 
come over, twenty or thirty men nearest it would dive for 
the ditches, and get right into their places again after it had 
landed. Sometimes one would land right in the road and 
not get a man. This was a trick we had learned pretty well 
in the British sector, and every man developed his skill still 
further that night. Finally the road cleared, and we moved 
out of the woods, and on up the road between Dead Man's 
Hill and Hill 304 without further trouble. It was still over 
an hour's hike that we had to go, and although we now car- 
ried only light packs — nothing but slicker and two days' ra- 
tions — we were pretty well loaded down with bombs, and 
were already fairly tired when we got there. 

We were spared the sight of the Bois Bourrus the next 
morning. The shelling had continued intermittently all 
night. The Transport men and cooks, who were not to come 



The Big Drive 59 

forward until the next night, organized rescue parties and 
searched the woods through the night, bringing the wounded 
into the dugouts, where Capt. Sweeney and the other medi- 
cal men bandaged them up. There were, I believe, seventeen 
killed and over fifty wounded in all, most of them from our 
battalion. When a final search was made by daylight, heads 
and limbs and torsos were seen scattered all over the ground 
wdiere L Company had been, one fellow's body being 
smeared on a kitchen wheel as if the spokes had been a part 
of his own skeleton. 

It was like waking from a nightmare to get out of that: 
place, and the last hour before we advanced, which other- 
wise might have been a trying time, was such a relief from 
what was past that it was robbed of any thoughts of what 
was to come. 

We deployed in an open field in front of Dead Man's Hill, 
guiding the moppers-up on the support companies of the 
battalion ahead. We had about six squads, which we 
placed at intervals with the corporal in charge of each one, 
while Lieutenant Titus and I each took the command of 
three squads. Less than an hour remained after we had 
completed our dispositions until the advance should begin. 
Titus and I sat down together for a few minutes and shared 
a jelly sandwich that I had carried with me for the last two 
days and shook hands to our mutual luck ; then we went to 
our own sections, and I attached myself to the middle squad 
of the three, as it was too dark to hope to see them all. 
Meanwhile our barrage had been going on in great intensity, 
lighting up the sky in back of us and creating a tremendous 
racket as it burst only a few hundred yards in front. Com- 
bined with the smoke which the artillery put down in addi- 
tion to their H.E.'s was a considerable natural fog, and a few 
minutes before "H Hour" it became so thick that one could 
hardly see five yards ahead of him. We looked at our 
watches frequently and awaited 5.30. 

"Going over the top" is an expression that has lasted from 
the trench days when the British troops climbed out of the 
trenches by ladders on the appointed minute, and there was 
a sharp and sudden break from the security of the trench to 



60 A Blue Ridijc Memoir 

the exposure on top of the parapet. With us it was a mis- 
nomer. There was no "top" to go over. We were already 
deployed in an open field with only a few scattered shell 
holes in it. The outposts had been withdrawn to avoid our 
own barrage; the boundaries of "No Man's Land" were not 
clearly defined. In fact, in one sense we really deployed in 
No Man's Land, under the i)rotection of our artillery. "H 
Hour" was chiefly remarkable for its failure to be dramatic 
or intense. 

Five-thirty came. I could see just eight men and could 
not tell whether the rest of the outfit was starting or not. 
We started forward as a "combat group" (single file) de- 
pending on my compass, for we were as much cut oft" from 
the others as if we had been alone at sea. We kept walking 
forward at a moderate pace, constantly wondering whether 
the other groups were going faster or slower. Soon some 
of our shells began to hit too close in front of us, and we 
slowed down a little. We did not know whether they were 
exceptionally short, or on the normal barrage line, for the 
air was too thick to see where the rest were bursting. The 
first living thing that I saw was a rabbit, coming through the 
smoke from the Boche lines like greased lightning. All 
kinds of game birds were also started, and flew about be- 
wildered. Then we saw a Boche coming toward us with 
his hands high in air and the most terrified look in his face 
that I have ever seen in mortal man, running almost as fast 
as the rabbit. We let him go on by, laughing at him as we 
passed, and we knew that the companies up ahead had begun 
to do business. 

We came to a gully about ankle deep in water, and crossed 
it at a leap. We didn't know that this was Forges Brook, 
which we had been told was deep enough to require bridges, 
and kept on wondering when we would come to it. Some of 
the Engineers made the same mistake, for we had gone 
several hundred yards beyond it when there loomed up out 
of the fog, going diagonally, a crowd of about twenty men 
carrying a bulky wooden structure which they told us was a 
bridge for Forges Brook. Soon we began to meet parts of 
other outfits, generally striking on slightly different angles 



The Big Drive 61 

from our own, for very slight compass errors make a big 
difiFerence when a little distance has passed. It became ap- 
parent that the different companies had already become 
pretty badly intermixed, and as for the moppers-up, I didn't 
have the slightest idea where any of my other squads were. 
The smoke and fog were fatal to any hope of keeping or- 
ganizations in their proper place and formation, but in spite 
of that it was a tremendous life-saver, for the front waves 
had gone over and flanked the first row of machine gun 
nests before the Boche gunners had hardly a chance to fire 
a shot, and our casualties were almost nothing as long as we 
were hidden. I began to run into other officers that I knew, 
and we exchanged "good mornings" and cigarettes as though 
we were meeting on a city street. I could not make head 
nor tail of where I was with reference to the companies, for 
I kept getting mixed up with the Second Battalion, whom I 
was supposed to follow, and then whenever we would be 
delayed a little we would find ourselves crowded on by L 
Company whom we were supposed to keep ahead of. 

Meanwhile there was the "mopping-up" to do, although 
the assault companies had pretty well finished the job them- 
selves. We were supposed to work from left to right on 
our sector, but this beautiful theory didn't work in practice, 
for the rest of the detachment was now entirely out of my 
control, and I had to trust to them to take care of the ground 
in front of them while my squad confined themselves to 
what was in our sight. To have attempted to go much to the 
flank with such a small group would have left us hopelessly 
behind, and spoiled any chance of our making the way clear 
for our battalion. So we ran along the top of the trenches, 
heaving bombs into all dugouts that might contain hidden 
gunners or snipers, looking at scattered wounded Germans 
to assure ourselves that they were safely out of action, ready 
to kill them if they should show any signs of treachery, and 
making the prisoners who were not badly hurt run faster to 
the rear. The old-fashioned way of "mopping-up" was to 
kill everything, and there is no possible doubt but that it was 
necessary in the days of closer personal combat and greater 
danger of treachery, but in the new open style of fighting. 



62 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

and with the Boche's general willingness to get safely to the 
rear as fast as he could, it was unnecessary and almost im- 
practicahle. Furthermore, we had been ordered to take 
prisoners whenever possible, because the Boche will stop 
shooting sooner to go to the rear than when he knows he is 
in for sure death. One of our companies that morning had 
the experience of opening fire on a group of Boche coming 
forward to surrender, and having them return to their guns 
and hit several of our men before they were again subdued. 
But it was often hard to tell just when a Boche was safely 
out of action and we heard later of a case in our sector where 
one had slipped back to a buzzer station after being 
wounded, to be found and killed a few minutes later, so it 
is probable that if anything, we should have been even 
rougher than we were. 

The first dead Yank I saw was lying directly in front of a 
machine gun in a shallow trench, not more than two yards in 
front of the muzzle, and the Boche behind the gun was also 
dead. They must have got each other at almost the same 
instant. We lost comparatively few men in this first stage 
of the drive, and had hardly any shelling at first because the 
sharpness of the attack kept the Boche busy moving his 
guns back. Company H almost ran into a gun as it was 
being moved, and shot the horses and drivers before they 
could escape. 

One of our men's faults was their curiosity and their 
craze for souvenirs. I came upon a whole group of therr^ 
gathered around a few prisoners, accepting presents of iron 
crosses and buttons which the frightened Boche offered 
doubtless as bribes for their lives, our men apparently for- 
getting that there were more enemies close at hand. By 
this time I had lost all my original men, as they would be 
delayed at some little job and be absorbed into the companies 
in rear, so I broke up the souvenir party and thereby re- 
cruited a dozen or so new moppers-up. I saw a lone Ameri- 
can lying on the ground shooting his Chauchat, so ran over 
to see what the fuss was, and had no sooner dropped down 
beside him than he curled up with a bullet in the stomach. I 
took his gun while another fellow picked up a few maga- 



The Big Drive 63 

zines. The wounded boy did not seem to be suffering, but 
talked in the voice of a sleepy child protesting against my 
taking his gun away, and I had to humor him as you would 
a child, and tell him I would give it back in a minute, in 
order to get it out of his grasp. We crawled rapidly around 
the flank of the hostile nest, but by the time we got to it 
someone had already crippled the single Hun with a shot 
from the other flank. By this time we were too far onward 
for me to leave my job and go back to the wounded man 
and I don't know whether he lived or not, but I believe he 
soon went painlessly to sleep still murmuring about the los.i 
of his beloved gun. 

Our soldiers in this drive walked ahead for the most part 
as nonchalantly as though they were on a route march. Only 
when something was actually encountered was the atnics- 
phere in the least intense. In fact sometimes they were too 
easy-going, apparently too innocent to realize what sudden 
crises might arise. They were all hungry by this time, and 
out came the bread and hardtack, though we did not stop. I 
think this attitude "got the German's goat" even more than 
intense ferocity, which they better understood. One Boche 
officer who was captured said he had seen many kinds of 
soldiers in many kinds of fighting, but he had never before 
seen soldiers advancing against the enemy with their rifles 
slung over their shoulders and bread and jam in their hands. 
I have been asked whether it was true that the Yanks went 
forward shouting "Lusitania !" They did not, in our outfit. 
They went forward eating, smoking cigarettes, chewing to- 
bacco, and when they did holler at the Boche it was in- 
variably a less romantic and more vulgar word that they 
yelled. 

By about eleven o'clock we had reached our preliminary 
objective, where we were to reform our lines and wait 
thirty-five minutes while the barrage was again laid down 
ahead of us. Our artillery this time was weaker and less 
accurate, either because of the more extreme range or be- 
cause some of it was moving up, and we also got a little 
desultory shelling from "Jerry." My own company came 
up, and I found most of my detachment had already re- 



64 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

joined them, so as the mopping-up jol) was about over, I 
decided to go back to I Company and try to get my own 
platoon into shape. 

A large group of prisoners came over the hill on our left, 
and as we didn't see any guards with them, some officers 
thought it was a counter-attack coming, so I Company 
started over to meet them, and narrowly averted shooting 
them up by suddenly seeing some Americans with them. 
This move had put us too far over to the left, and when we 
started forward again, I and K Companies were separated 
from the rest of the regiment. However, as there had been 
a gap between us and the 4th Division, it probably was just 
as well in the end. 

We advanced by ourselves in a double skirmish line over 
the next hill, with apparently no sign of trouble, and the 
right flank of the company was approaching a small patch 
of woods, wdien a burst of machine gun fire suddenly splat- 
tered the ground about our feet, slightly wounding one man 
in the leg. We dropped instantly, and hugged the ground 
close until some men from the other end of the company, 
who were not in direct range, had time to work into the 
woods from the flank, for it is an inevitable cause of needless 
casualties to advance frontally on a machine gun nest if it 
can possibly be flanked. Then we crawled around until we 
could also get into the woods, and a regular man-hunt devel- 
oped. The woods was grown thick with laurel, penetrated 
by many intersecting paths, and two or three men would 
sneak up each fork to hunt out the prey. About eight of 
us, keeping on the main path, came to a small clearing which 
contained two small wooden shanties. We approached cau- 
tiously, watching the trees for snipers, and glancing sharply 
around on all sides. We found the buildings deserted, and 
then saw near one of them the entrance of a dugout. I 
peered down, and saw something moving down in the dark- 
ness, so I pulled a bomb out of my pocket and struck the 
cap against my tin hat. At the sound of the hissing fuse, 
there came from the dugout the most unholy conglomera- 
tion of yells that I ever heard from human throats — screams 
of terror and abject pleading. But six seconds is too short a 



The Big Drive 65 

time to negotiate a surrender ; they had kept hidden too 
long and could not possibly claim to be regarded as prisoners. 
The fuse was already going and down the hole went the 
bomb. I jumped back from the mouth and in an instant 
there was a terrific explosion and a cloud of dust and smoke 
came up. Why it didn't kill them all, we couldn't imagine, 
but no sooner had the smoke cleared than the cries started 
again, and we could distinguish the words "No more" in 
English. This time we waited with our guns ready, and out 
piled eight Boche, apparently without a scratch, but as scared 
as men could well be. There was something ludicrous and 
at the same time contemptible in the way they screamed for 
mercy. A short five minutes ago, they had almost killed us, 
and now they were yelping "Kamerad," and giving us their 
pistols and even offering their personal belongings with the 
attitude of whipped curs. We didn't kill them, but we 
didn't want any of their "Kamerad" stuff either, and we 
scarcely knew how to express our disgust at their offer to 
shake hands with us for sparing their lives. It was this 
same feeling of loathing that kept me from wanting any- 
thing they had as souvenirs, though two of the men got 
beautiful Luger revolvers and various other articles. Most 
of the men were souvenir-crazy, but in fairness it must be 
remembered that whatever they took was purely as souvenirs, 
and I don't believe any of the prisoners' stuff was ever taken 
for its money value. I contented myself with a small wooden 
sign on the shanty, which proved that we had captured a 
battalion headquarters, and I lost that soon afterwards. We 
also found a whole bag full of maps and documents, which 
we sent back to the Intelligence Officer, though I never 
heard whether they proved of any value. The eight pris- 
oners were started back over the hill and sent running to the 
rear with an "Allez !" and perhaps a kick, and after search- 
ing the woods a few minutes more, we rejoined the com- 
pany. 

We were now on the edge of a large woods, and called a 
halt until we could re-establish liaison with the rest of the 
regiment, and the runners were kept busy hunting in vain 
for the Major and the other companies, while Lieutenant 



66 A Dine Ridge Memoir 

France went over to get what information he could from a 
4th Division Battalion with whom we were in contact. About 
this time a flock of five or six "Jerry" planes came over, 
flying low and cavorting around as if they owned the whole 
sky, shooting machine guns at any troops they could find. 
As usual, not an American plane was in sight. There never 
were any when Jerry was around, though one would gene- 
rally come over after the enemy had left, like an innocent- 
looking policeman appearing after the conclusion of a street 
fight. We all got into the woods and laid low as soon as we 
distinguished the black crosses on the plane, but were afraid 
they might have seen us, in which case the shells would be 
due to arrive in about five minutes, so we scattered about 
in the various small "bivvies" and shelters of the old Hun 
camp. To our surprise, only a handful of shells came, and 
as things quieted down, and evening approached, the men 
began to move from holes in the ground to the more com- 
fortable shanties. The fact that these places had been 
evacuated by the Boche before we arrived led us to believe 
that some of our troops had already cleared the woods ahead 
of us, when our feeling of security was abruptly shattered 
by the instant death of a K Company man from a sniper's 
bullet. It was then growing dark, and we failed to locate 
the sniper, but we hastily assembled the men from their in- 
secure positions, went back to the open field, and formed a 
ring of automatic rifle posts about the two companies to 
repel any attack during the night, while the rest of the men 
dug little holes in the ground to gain a slight measure of 
both protection and warmth, and went to sleep. It was 
miserable sleeping indeed. The ground was damp, a chilly 
night had followed a day of profuse sweating and we had 
not carried our blankets, as a man cannot fight with a heavy 
pack. Lieutenant France and I had been lucky enough to 
find a "Jerry" blanket in one of the shanties, and a few of 
the others did the same, but even with them our teeth chat- 
tered all night, and it must have been a good deal worse for 
those who were less lucky. 

In the cold dawn of a rainy morning, we had, as some of 
our persistent humorists remarked, "bullets instead of bu- 



The Big Drive 67 

gles for reveille." We were awakened by the sound of ma- 
chine guns and the buzz of the bullets overhead, coming 
from the flanks, evidently indirect fire from a long distance. 
We kept low and made for the woods, which we reached 
without casualties. We had lingered long enough and de- 
termined to push on, bearing to the right, and either locate 
our own regiment or fight the rest of the drive alone. A 
trail led out in the right direction, and the brush was too 
heavy for rapid traveling ofif the trails, so putting out a 
"point" in front, we set out. Several times we heard the 
ominous "rat-tat-tat" of guns, and thought we were strik- 
ing opposition, but as no bullets came our way, we concluded 
the sound came from a distance and the fire was not directed 
at us. After thus advancing about a kilometer, the road 
came out into a large open field. Suspecting that this clear- 
ing was under observation from the wooded hill beyond, we 
kept the men concealed in the woods until the next step 
should be decided upon. It was well that we did so, for it 
was not long before shells started going over our heads 
and the empty woods several hundred yards behind us was 
given a severe bombardment. We were evidently farther 
front than the Boche figured, and if he had seen us, we 
would have caught it hard without a doubt. As a drive pro- 
gresses, it becomes increasingly harder for our artillery to 
support us, and proportionately easier for the Boche to shell 
us, and we were now at the point where the original im- 
petus of the attack had played out. From now on the In- 
fantry, unaided, had to run up against the combination of 
everything the Boche had, in positions of his preparation 
and choosing, and we gained less per day in this phase than 
we had gained per hour on the initial morning. 

We met some of the C Company officers in a wooden 
shanty, and learned from them that we were again in con- 
tact, though no longer in our original support position, the 
line having widened out and the companies having shrunk 
so that most of the regiment was in the front line. A con- 
tinuation of the general advance was not planned until after- 
noon, when we hoped we would have some artillery help, and 
in the meantime the men ate a little and rested. Almost all 



68 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

were out of water, and some of us refilled our canteens from 
the drippings of the rain from the shanty roof. The water 
was dirty and tasted of tar, but it was a precious discovery. 
We also filled our pockets with some little nuts, of which a 
large quantity had been left in the shanty. 

The artillery help did not arrive, but the order to ad- 
vance did, and we formed on the little road and started 
through the woods. The denseness of the underbrush soon 
broke up any semblance of formation, and it became, as it 
were, a hand to hand struggle with nature to advance at all. 
The large trees were scarce, but the fallen trunks and the 
tangled small growth formed an almost impenetrable jungle 
through which a man had to struggle like a football player 
bucking a line. Only a few of the nearest men could be seen 
at a time, and we were as much dependent on the compass as 
we had been in the fog and smoke of the previous day. Our 
leggins were torn in shreds and hands and faces scratched 
in the scramble, so that the woods made us look more like 
wrecks than the fighting itself. For an hour or more we 
went on, working to keep the company from complete scat- 
tering and not hearing a sign of war on either side. Ripe 
blackberries grew in our path in untouched profusion, and 
they were a windfall to the hungry and thirsty men, who 
grabbed handfuls without stopping. We approached a sharp 
ridge, and in the valley beyond was the Meuse River. Several 
paths led up the hillside, and the men, almost exhausted from 
their push through the brush, inevitably took to the paths 
and were going faster than had been possible before when 
the familiar "rat-tat-tat-tat" was heard, and one of the 
scouts came running back to tell us that machine gun fire 
had been opened from the ridge. He hardly needed to tell 
us, for the bullets began to sing over our heads as we hur- 
ried up to the support of the men in advance. The platoons 
were badly intermixed, and some men had gotten a good 
deal ahead and others a good deal behind. Those who came 
first pushed up the path and spread out on the side of it 
under cover of the slope, while the men who had been a little 
behind were deployed along a transverse path to the left and 
crawled up through the thicket to the edge of the clearing, 



The Big Drive 69 

where we could fire from cover into the open. A swale in 
the ground made it hard to get a good target, but we would 
now and then see a Boche head and fire. Private Hood, a 
Kentucky mountaineer, who now hated the Boche as per- 
sonally as he had hated the officers a year before, got up a 
tree where he could see over the swale and hit four of them. 
No one else would ever have thought of that method. 

Meanwhile attempts were being made to blow out the nest 
at the head of the path with rifle grenades. The platoon 
along the trail was lying flat, a heavy stream of bullets cutting 
the twigs just above them, though an advance of a few 
more yards would have brought them over a little cleft in the 
slope where the bullets were just skimming the ground. 
Lieutenant Schultz of K Company came up the path as 
coolly as though it had been a village street, and learned that 
several rifle grenades had missed their aim, so taking a rifle 
from one of the men he advanced up the path with Sergeant 
Barnhart, to try another shot. A burst from the machine 
guns was heard, and an instant later we saw the Sergeant 
running down the path, carrying the Lieutenant limp in his 
arms, a perfect hail of bullets playing about them. How he 
got down to the safety of the swale, running at full height, 
seemed a miracle. He could have crawled down, dragging 
the wounded of^cer with him, in comparative safety, but his 
one idea was to get him to a place where his wound could be 
instantly attended to. The lieutenant was already beyond 
medical help, with a clean hole through the abdomen, against 
which the utmost promptness and skill would have been 
useless, and there in the woods he died, too stunned to suffer, 
in less than five minutes. He was the first of^cer of our 
battalion to die, and a braver one had never lived among us. 
Sergeant Barnhart was awarded the Distinguished Service 
Cross for his gallant eflfort to save him. 

It had by this time become apparent that instead of a 
single "nest" a whole system of strong defensive positions 
occupied the ridge. We had by this time killed and cap- 
tured several Boche, had lost Lieutenant Schultz and one 
man mortally wounded in return, and had done no more 
than harass them. Parts of C, I and K Companies were 



70 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

there, totalling perhaps three hundred and fifty men ; we 
were off our sector, to the left and front of our regiment and 
completely cut off from communication with our battalion 
commander, and with nothing to prevent the Boche from 
cutting off our rear. To have cleared the ridge at all costs 
would have undoubtedly caused the almost entire loss of the 
detachment, while with artillery support and proper liaison, it 
might be easy. I was glad that the decision did not fall 
upon me. The Captain of "C Company decided to establish 
a defensive position for the night, get in touch with the 
other units, and not force the issue while the odds were 
still against us. Accordingly we drew back down the hill 
in the growing darkness, going deep enough into the woods 
so that Boche shells during the night could find us only by 
chance, and established a ring of automatic rifle posts. The 
sound of firing showed us that we were surrounded on three 
sides. In front, to the right, and in rear, we heard the fa- 
miliar rattle during the evening. Only toward the east, the 
direction in which the other companies were supposed to 
be, were the woods silent, and we hoped, free of the enemy. 
We were indeed in a ticklish position, and might easily 
have been completely surrounded and shot up if the Boche 
had been more aggressive. Our sentinels established, we lay 
down to try and get a few hours' sleep, while the company 
commanders talked over the situation in low tones. 

It was shortly after one o'clock that I woke up, stiff and 
shivering, to find Captain Miller talking to me. He wanted 
me to patrol through the woods to the east, and get in con- 
tact with the other companies, or that failing, at least to see 
if there were any Boche in that direction and pick a better 
defensive position to which the men could be moved before 
dawn. The men were sleeping all around in the dark, and 
it took some time to find the right men to come with me. I 
had to go along the line, waking men at random, and letting 
them go back to sleep if they did not happen to be men 
whom I knew and trusted. I finally came across Sgt. Gontz 
and two privates with whom I was satisfied, and we set out. 
I will never forget that expedition ; it was not particularly 
dangerous, for we were a small enough group to keep out of 



The Big Drive 71 

trouble, and our mission did not require fighting unless cor- 
nered; but the loneliness of it and the fear of getting lost in 
the woods gave us a sort of "spooky" feeling that it was 
hard to shake off. Striking a grassy vista that formed a 
kind of natural trail, we made our way quietly. A new moon 
was up and we guided on it, as a check on our compass 
work, for it happened to be straight in our direction. The 
men had their rifles and bayonets ready, while I held my 
compass in my left hand and my revolver in my right. Once 
we came to a tumble-down cabin that looked suspicious, and 
we sneaked up to the door and satisfied ourselves that it was 
empty before passing it. Then we struck a real woods road 
leading back to where we knew the regiment must be, and 
followed it a short distance until we came to a bushy hilltop 
which afforded concealment and at the same time allowed a 
good field of fire into the valley in front. Time was moving 
on rapidly, and the men had to be moved before dawn, so we 
left off our search for the other troops and went back to 
guide the detachment to this new position. 

The three companies were silently awakened at about 3.30 
and led to the position, where they settled down in hiding, 
lest aeroplanes should spot us and shelling commence. We 
had thus extricated ourselves from a situation that might 
easily have proved a trap and we breathed a sigh of relief 
when runners from the Major appeared and said we were 
now just in front of Battalion Headquarters. We had hit 
our direction and distance on our night patrol more accu- 
rately than I had dared hope. We were out of trouble, but 
a deep stretch of woods yet remained between us and the 
Meuse River, which was our objective. 

All that morning we lay concealed under the bushes. We 
were now out of food, except for a few more provident men 
who had saved a little from the previous day, and out of 
water, and we wondered when relief or rations would come 
up. Ala j or Emory came up and told us that our artillery 
would shell the woods ahead of us before we advanced, and 
we waited hopefully for a "man's-size" barrage. The river 
was in plain sight over the next ridge, and with our glasses 
we could see a train pulling down the valley, getting stores 



72 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

away before we should reach them, but our guns were too 
far back for the information to do them any good. Away 
over on the left we could see several companies of the 
Fourth Division advancing across a clearing and disappear- 
ing again into the woods. 

Finally about six of our shells landed at random in the 
woods, a sorry imitation of a bombardment, and we formed 
for the advance. Just at this time we were favored with 
a dose of gas shells, but as it was only "sneeze gas," it 
didn't do much harm, and we hastened to go forward out 
of its range. 

As on the previous day, we had a hard struggle through 
the underbrush, but this time the company commanders 
were determined to keep in touch, even at the expense of 
less open deployment. For once, we were agreeably surprised. 
We had expected that the forest would be full of machine 
guns and snipers, and that we would have a terrific fight on 
our hands. Once in the morning when a solitary American 
plane had flown over there it had apparently been fired at 
from every tree, and the Major told us afterward that when 
he was forced to send us forward with a farcical barrage he 
never expected to see us come out alive. But luck was 
with us for the time at least, and although we had a little 
shelling, we struck no serious trouble, and at last came to an 
old ditch on the outer edge of the woods. As before, our 
organizations had become badly broken up in the thick tangle 
of forest, and we landed up in that ditch, with men of every 
company in the regiment hopelessly intermingled. This was 
considered our objective, for the right of the regiment rested 
on the river, and as it flowed northeast, diagonally to the di- 
rection of our advance, the left had to extend away from 
it to avoid leaving an enormous gap and to avoid direct ob- 
servation and exposure from the Boche batteries on the 
east bank. 

Here we prepared to spend the night. It was no favor- 
able position, for we were subject to close range fire from 
front and flank, while our guns were apparently helplessly 
in the rear. The ditch, apparently a very old trench, caved 
in and grown over with bushes, was the only semblance of 



The Big Drive 73 

cover in the whole forest, and the only place from which 
Boche infiltration back into the woods could be prevented, 
and here the whole regiment was strung along. They were 
so exhausted that it was with difficulty that we got them 
spread out and evenly distributed, and even then there were 
far too many men for the front line. Our training had al- 
ways been to "defend in depth," but the woods were so 
thick that in this situation the front line alone could take part 
in the defense, and someone in authority way back in the 
rear was so afraid of an infantry counter-attack that he 
forgot to consider that a crowded front line invites heavy 
casualties from shell fire. I don't pretend to pass judgment 
on the theoretical wisdom of the Corps Staff, but I do know 
that we did not get a counter-attack, but did sufl^er more 
from shelling than if we had kept to the principle of a thin 
front line. I knew we were in for it as soon as I saw the 
jam in that ditch, and was only surprised that it held off 
until morning. 

It was a mean night. No one was allowed to sleep because 
of the danger of a counter-attack, and there was no place to 
sleep anyhow, for the bottom and sides of the ditch were 
three inches in mud. Our muscles and nerves were worn 
out by the strain of the past three days, and we were still 
living on the hoarded remnants of our original two days' 
emergency rations. The cold drizzling rain that added to 
our discomfort was for once welcome, for we could catch a 
little water in our mess tins and lick the wet leaves of the 
bushes to take the worst edge off our thirst. Several times 
I went to sleep standing up, to be awakened with a start as 
I lost my sense of equilibrium and found myself falling over. 
Then I would try to keep awake by catching water and 
would be rewarded by about a teaspoonful every half hour. 
Once late in the evening the taut nerves snapped ; some men 
thought they saw the Boche coming, and all along the lines 
rifles started crackling, the men blazing away in the darkness 
at nothing, some even throwing hand grenades. The panic 
was hard to stop, for in the darkness an officer's voice was no 
louder than any other, and by the time the firing died out 
our whole position must have been shown up. Our own 



74 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

artillery contributed to the party by firing behind us at in- 
tervals through the night. They did no damage, for the 
shells were landing at a safe distance in the rear, but they 
kept our nerves on edge. We had been provided with rock- 
ets with which to signal to the artillery in such an event, 
but by this time so much equipment had been lost, and 
units so broken up, that it was impossible in the night to 
find anyone who had the necessary combination of blank 
cartridges and lights. 

As soon as dawn came we managed to find some, and 
after several unsuccessful attempts with wet lights, finally 
got off the combination of "green followed by white." The 
range was increased just enough to put us in a more dan- 
gerous place than before, so we hastily repeated the signal, 
and were rewarded by seeing our shells break on the ridge 
well in front of us. Whether our rockets, or the firing in 
the night helped to give the enemy our range, or whether they 
were just waiting for the dawn, anyhow, I do not know, but 
we had just begun to congratulate ourselves on being rid of 
our own shells, when the Boche cut loose. 

It is useless to try to describe a barrage. We crouched 
down in the meagre protection of the ditch and waited, 
wondering where each one was going to strike, and whether 
the Boche infantry would come over. It was not heavy 
stuff, but there was plenty of it, and even three-inch shells 
can rip things up when they come like machine gun bullets. 
A runner brought an order to pull back to the next hill, and, 
although we did not know the reason for it, we lost no time 
in obeying. Not a man had left the ditch so long as our 
orders were to stay there, but once we got the order to 
leave, it was a race to get out of that infernal shelling, and 
the men streamed back along the paths with no semblance 
of order. Men were getting killed and wounded on all sides ; 
most of the wounded kept on going, and many who could 
not walk alone were grabbed and pulled along by well men, 
without stopping for bandaging. 

When we reached the clearing behind the woods we saw 
some of the 33rd Division going in, and learned that we were 
being relieved. Since they had only to hold, and not con- 



Tlie Big Drive 75 

tinue the drive at present, they could occupy the line less 
densely, and were pushing outposts and patrols up to where 
we had been without subjecting whole battalions to the 
shelling. The relief was the cause of our order to va- 
cate^ the ditch, and in fact we were just about relieved 
in time, for we had spent our strength to the limit and 
would have had great difficulty in re-forming again 
even in rear of the woods. It appeared that they in- 
tended relieving us during the previous night but had 
been unable to locate us in the dark, which resulted 
in the confusion in the morning. Where the woods are so 
thick that one can only see a few yards, and runners get 
lost in broad daylight, things do not work so smoothly as 
they look on paper. 

Our joy at finding we were relieved is beyond description. 
Correspondents who write "front line stuff" from nice dug- 
outs five or ten miles in the rear, may gush about the men's 
anxiety to have another crack at the Boche, but let any of 
them go through a few nights like that one with a barrage 
at dawn, and see if they are not temporarily more enthusias- 
tic about the chances of getting a good drink of water, a hot 
meal, and a few hours' sleep in a safe place. 
^ We went on back, knowing that our job was done for the 
time being, stopping when chance offered to pick up a loaf of 
bread or a can of tomatoes from a pile of rations, or to fill 
our stomachs and canteens at a spring, or to "bum" a smoke, 
and in this way we drifted back until we came to our 
kitchens, where we found a meal of hot canned beef and 
coffee waiting, our first real honest meal since four days 
before. Here the battalion collected, like bees around a hive, 
the kitchens feeding everyone who came along regardless of 
what his outfit was. Then we took up our station in a system 
of old Boche trenches near Cuisy, over which we had passed 
on the first day of the drive, and found that we now consti- 
tuted the "reserve brigade." 

The comforts of our new position were not extensive, as 
half of our blankets had been lost, and there was no further 
weather protection for the men than the "bivvies" they could 
dig in the side of the trenches. Captain Gilmore of "A" 



7(i A Blue Ridge Memoir 

Company was lucky enough to find a corrugated iron dug- 
out into which he invited the "I" Company officers as well as 
his own, so we took up our abode in what had a few days 
before been some Hun officers' home. We w^ere shelled oc- 
casionally, but as we had nothing to do but keep out of their 
way, and none happened to strike the trenches or our flimsy 
roof direct, they bothered us very little. It was such safety 
and comfort in comparison to the period just passed, that we 
were as carefree and happy as though we were in a Paris 
hotel, and we slept and ate to our heart's content. 

In spite of some things that might have been done better, 
and some mistakes concerning which "hindsight was easier 
than foresight" the drive had been a success, our objective 
had been gained at a reasonable cost, and the regiment was 
corriplimented by the Division Commander. We had come 
through our first real ofi"ensive action with credit, and those 
of us who were left were now intent on getting all the rest 
and relaxation we could before we should go in again. 



77 



CHAPTER V 
The Cunel Drive 

THE "MEUSE ARGONNE" DRIVE of September 
26th to November 11th is now spoken of as though a 
single battle, but from the shorter perspective of an outfit 
that was in it, it contained as many different "drives" or 
"shows" as the outfit happened to make during that period. 
Some divisions "held" between "drives," some "drove" ex- 
clusively and some did some of each. The 80th division 
never did anything but "drive" and our regiment's share in 
the whole consisted of three such "drives" each of a few 
intense days, after each of which we were relieved, at least 
from the actual front line. To us the three drives were 
separate and distinct, though from a staff viewpoint they 
were, of course, all parts of the same engagement. In the 
army one is little interested with what does not concern him 
directly, and while we were in the trenches at Cuisy we only 
knew that the other brigade of our division was "up the 
line" somewhere, and to this day I am unable to even go out- 
side of my own battalion's experience without depending en- 
tirely on hearsay and risking errors. I shall therefore, leave 
it to those whose jobs kept them in touch with the general 
news to tell what happened in that region of front during 
the first week of October, and for that matter, in the second 
week as well, for even while we were on our "second drive," 
I was lucky enough if I understood the platoon and com- 
pany situation, without bothering about questions of divi- 
sions and corps. 

This much was evident before we left Cuisy — that things 
were not moving as rapidly up front as they had at the first 
jump-oflF. As our own first drive had shown us, the thick 
woods which checker-board the hills of Cunel, and which 
had not been fought over since the Huns originally took 
them, made far more difficult going than the bald, shell- 
pocked hills around Verdun. The nature of the country 
lent itself wonderfully to the defensive plans of the Boche ; 
the proportion of forest to clearing was just about enough so 



78 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

that all the clearings were covered hy the field of fire from 
unseen guns in the woods, while the woods were filled with 
snipers and accurately ranged for artillery. The joh was 
done by brute force, a division going in on a narrow sector 
and advancing in spite of everything until its momentum 
w^is lost, then another one relieving it and doing the same 
thing. It was discouraging from a local standpoint, for the 
end of a particular outfit's "show" would thus generally be 
less successful than the beginning, but the accumulated re- 
sult was success, and it was only by having and using plenty 
of divisions, and changing them soon enough, that the job 
was done. And there were more divisions used and more 
companies and battalions used up, in the neighborhood of 
the little village of Cunel, than at any other place that I 
know of on the American front, and the 320th Infantry, 
like many another good outfit, had its turn on these hills, 
gained a little ground, and went back for replacements. 

The fighting around this region was apparently not han- 
dled as well from above as was the initial stage of the drive. 
No such great barrage prepared our way as was laid down 
on September 26th. Frequent changes of orders and uncer- 
tainty as to just what we were supposed to do, incorrect ar- 
tillery firing, and almost total absence of aviation, were an- 
noying features. Lack of good "Liaison" perhaps largely 
includes the others. Instead of preparing a co-ordinated at- 
tack, as on September 26th, and on November 1st, the staff 
apparently allowed each outfit to work out its own salvation, 
depending on the original impetus which had in fact been 
totally expended long ago. Some mistakes were made by 
line officers, but the greatest bungles were made higher up. 
In spite of everything, we gained ground, and in the course 
of time other divisions carried it on until the Hun's dcathgrip 
was loosened, but we took our turn in Hell to do it. And yet 
I do not feel overmuch sympathy with the tendency to 
"muckrake" for needless casualties. There were cases, to be 
sure, of companies who were caught in too close formations 
by shelling. There were a few cases where our shells hit 
our men, and more where they failed to hit the enemy. 
There were cases where lieutenants failed to put their men in 



The Citnel Drive 79 

the best cover, and there were cases where ge-nerals failed 
to secure proper cooperation between adjacent brigades or 
divisions, and doubtless there were a few cases blameworthy 
enough to merit investigation as far as individuals -are 
concerned. But let any critic look at the rows of wooded 
hills of Cunel, see some of the old Boche machine gun and 
artillery positions, and say how they could have been taken 
without going through Hell, and then let him look at a map 
of the old lines and say whether the war could have been 
won in 1918 if they had not been taken. Our staff officers 
were inexperienced in that kind of work — one high-ranking 
officer who was in the line told me the Corps Staff was a 
bigger obstacle in his way than the Boche — but how in the 
world could we have had an experienced army without wait- 
ing for the next spring and incurring casualties all winter? 
The "doughboys" of the line do want it understood dis- 
tinctly that it was not the staff officers who "won the war," 
but they went through the struggle without whining then, 
and will not be greatly helped by their friends whining now. 
There were six of us, the officers of Companies A and I, 
who lived in the old Boche dugout for a week which, in 
spite of physical discomfort, was one of the most boyishly 
hilarious of our lives. We "roughhoused," wrote letters, 
sang and read ancient magazines in the evenings, and in the 
daytime amused ourselves by watching the troubles of our 
friends, the airmen. The Boche planes flew over us pretty 
freely, and we never missed a chance to watch the "antis" 
and machine guns trying to get them. It was a great sight to 
watch the puffs of smoke appear in the sky around them, and 
one' day they actually brought two of them down. Then 
there was the balloon, which afforded good melodrama sev- 
eral times a day until the climax came. We did not envy this 
American balloonist his job, for he had to jump out with 
his parachute three or four times a day, when a Jerry would 
get too close. Then when it would be driven off he would 
haul down the balloon and go up again. Finally they got it. 
A Boche plane dropped out of a cloud straight for him ; we 
saw him give a wild leap, and an instant later the balloon 
burst out into a terrific mass of flame, though he landed 



80 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

safely. We "innocent bystanders" stood around on the hills 
and gave way to unbecoming mirth ; not being the "goats," 
our sense of humor was doubtless perverted. Of the six of 
us who bunked together during those days, two were killed 
the next week, but the knowledge that this was likely to hap- 
pen did not keep us from getting our fun when we could. 

On the evening of October 6th, the First Battalion moved 
out, leaving the I Company bunch alone in the dugout, and 
we knew that our turn was soon coming. The next night 
we got our orders and prepared for a mean all-night job of 
trench digging. It was pitch-dark and raining hard by the 
time we started out, and the ground was so slippery that 
walking was difficult. Our way led us over to the left, and 
we entered a deep basin between two hills, occupied by a 
balloon and some heavy guns. Here we piled our packs, 
and started again for the scene of our labors. The road — 
it was just south of Montfaucon — was jammed with motor 
and horse transport of every kind, and we had to narrow 
down to single file to wind our way among the stalled trucks, 
and had to look sharp to avoid collision with the moving 
ones. 

Major Emory led the way, for which I admired him, for 
this was not to be a fight, but only an ordinary digging job 
that he might easily have delegated to a junior officer had he 
been less conscientious. After a hard struggle through the 
mud across an open field, we came to a road near Nantillois, 
and it was on the brow of the hill in front of the road that 
the trenches had been taped out by the engineers. For over 
three hours the men dug, in darkness, rain and constant ap- 
prehension of shelling, until in the early morning hours the 
job was declared done, tools turned in, and we started back 
to where our packs were piled. No one had been hit by the 
occasional shells which came over in our general direction, 
but a more exhausting job could hardly be invented, and 
when in broad daylight we reached the balloon we were quite 
close to "all in." The men unrolled their packs on the 
muddy ground, while the officers had the luck to be invited 
in to an artillery officer's dugout for a few hours' sleep. 



The Citncl Drive 81 

We turned out again early in the afternoon to return to the 
front. It was cold and rainy, our weariness from the past 
night had not yet worn off, and it was difficult indeed to feel 
much optimism at the prospect. Not a man but would have 
given everything except honor to have stayed just one night 
more in the comparative security of the heavy artillery. It 
is not bloodthirstiness that makes men do their duty; it is 
conscience. Rain, exhaustion and shells can knock the ardor 
out of the roughest "hard guy" that was ever born, but it 
is the man with an efficient conscience, be he rough or gentle 
in disposition, who will stick to his job in spite of every- 
thing. 

Our way led us up where we had gone the previous night, 
past the high ruins of Montfaucon and up to the field artil- 
lery positions on the hill back of Nantillois. Here we 
camped for the night in "fox holes" that had already been 
dug, not yet knowing what our job for the next day would 
be. By the time we had disposed of our respective platoons 
in the best available holes we officers found there were 
none left for ourselves, so Lieutenant France invented one 
of the most novel and remarkable "homes" that I have ever 
slept in. He found a large pile of empty "75" shell boxes, 
and with these we made a floor, and walls to keep out the 
wind, leaving only the roof uninventable. It was indeed a 
"Fools Paradise," for instead of being below the ground we 
were raised up on a platform with only flimsy boards to keep 
shells out, but there are times when comfort looks better 
than safety. Our feet were so wet and cold that we finally 
decided to risk taking our shoes off, and Titus and I have 
had many a laugh since at the way we kept each other 
going by taking turns at putting our feet in between the other 
fellow's shins. Dawn came at last, and we spent the morn- 
ing still loafing around, shelled a little off and on, and still 
not knowing what we were going to do. Then at about 
three o'clock in the afternoon the order came to advance at 
3 :30, in support of the First Battalion, which was to jump 
off in front of Nantillois. 

The 319th was on our left, and my platoon, with a section 
of machine gunners, was designated as a "combat liaison 



82 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

group" to connect with the right of the 319th and take care 
of any gap that might occur. We advanced in cohimns of 
half platoons over the hill by Nantillois, hurriedly shed our 
packs, and formed into the more open formation of "com- 
bat groups" on the hill north of the village, where already 
some men of the assault battalion, which had gone on be- 
yond, were lying dead. Artillery on both sides was barking 
furiously, but our shells were scattering all over the woods at 
random instead of forming a systematic barrage like we had 
followed in our first drive, while the Boche, wdio had had 
four years to study the ground, was placing his shells all too 
well. 

A kilometer of open field lay in front of us, the next ridge 
being crowned by the Bois des Ogons. We advanced at a 
steady walk, while the Boche planes circled over our heads, 
and the shells tore holes in the earth around us. Our ad- 
vance over this shell-torn field was a witness to the value of 
our open formation, and to our experience in quick drop- 
ping. Time after time a big one would come tearing through 
the air, a dozen men nearest it would drop, a cloud of earth 
and smoke would appear and one would wonder whether any 
of them had escaped. In an instant one w^ould get up, and 
then another, and often the whole crowd would jump into 
their places again, but sometimes one or two would lie 
still, or would rise slowly and start painfully toward the 
rear. 

Had we been in close masses, or had the men failed to 
drop flat when one landed in a small group, the battalion 
would have been knocked sky-high. On the edge of the 
woods we saw a fearful spectacle. Phosphorus shells were 
breaking in air, throwing down blazing streamers of yel- 
lowish gray smoke in fantastic shapes, like weird monsters 
of death. Fortunately, this show stopped before we were 
forced to go through it. It is not, in fact, quite as danger- 
ous as it looks, but it forms one of the most frightful spec- 
tacles for a man to approach that is known, and is used 
more as a "goat getter" than as a killer. 

We reached the edge of the Bois des Ogons and the bat- 
talion took cover in shell holes for a few minutes while the 



The Cimel Drive 83 

Boche shelled the woods. The planes had evidently seen us 
reach the woods and thought we were going through it, for 
a perfect hail of shells landed among the trees ahead of us. 
Major Emory fooled them and saved his men by waiting 
until the worst of it was over before he started, but enough 
were landing at our edge to cause a few wounds in spite of 
the cover, and to make it mighty uncomfortable. While 
this was going on, it was fast growing dark, and we had not 
yet closed up with the 319th, so our "combat liaison group" 
had to start on through the woods without waiting any 
longer with the battalion. We thought they were ahead of 
us, as well as to the left, and a trail through the woods 
seemed to lead in the right direction. We jumped up out of 
our scanty protection and plunged into the forest, with the 
shells still bursting among the trees, going single file at five 
pace intervals so that a direct hit on one man might spare 
the man next to him. It was well that we did so, though 
with all precautions it was mainly good luck that saved us 
from losing a single man. We had gone about two hundred 
yards, and I was leading the way, with my "runner," Pri- 
vate Symington, five paces behind me, while Sergeant Sug- 
den closed the rear, when a shell whistled so suddenly that 
I didn't even have time to drop, and burst in the soft soil a 
few feet from the interval between Symington and me. It 
must have actually gone between us, and only the interval 
and the softness of the soil, which choked the fragments, 
saved us. We were showered with mud, and it was ten 
minutes before my ears stopped ringing. 

We came out on a trail running transverse, with open 
fields on our left, and by this time it was pitch dark. Short 
and hasty patrols in three directions failed to locate any 
319th and while we waited for them in a ditch we began to 
receive gas shells, so I decided we had better drive ahead 
and trust to luck that we were not already beyond the front 
line and going up against the enemy by ourselves. 

Machine guns were rattling as we deployed in the open 
field, for as I could not be sure that any of our comrades 
were directly ahead of us, I was afraid to continue in col- 
umn and had organized a skirmish line. The noise seemed to 



84 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

come from the middle of the field directly ahead of us, 
though we found later that it was actually farther away. 
The gas annoyed us slightly, but it was impossible to "carry 
on" in gas masks without getting hopelessly scattered and 
lost in the dark, so most of us "took a chance." We had 
advanced about a hundred yards when we ran into a broad 
tangled belt of barbed wire, and had to stop and look along 
it for a gap. We finally located a place where it was cut or 
torn enough to let us through with some trouble and scratch- 
ing, but it broke our skirmish line and forced us back into a 
loose column. Beyond the main wire was a system of 
trenches, and the whole ground was a mass of tangled wire 
and muddy holes, through which we struggled in the dark, 
not knowing whether there were any Boche in the trenches 
or not. The difficult going resulted in a gap in our column, 
and Sergeant Sugden with about a dozen men were lost and 
had to camp for the night in complete isolation until they 
found our own company again next day. These trenches 
formed part of the Boche position about the Farm de la 
Madeleine, which was a few hundred yards to our left, and 
which had been finally cleared that afternoon, but we didn't 
know then whether it had yet been cleared. 

We came out on a narrow gauge railroad track — part of 
the Boche ammunition transport system which lined that 
whole region — and met a runner who said he could guide us 
to "K" Company of the 319th which was on the hill in front 
of the track, so we followed him. It was with a great sense 
of relief that I found myself connected with other troops, 
and with a captain to report to, for the worst of our little 
trip had been our isolation and the possibilities of opposi- 
tion with a unit of only about fifty men. 

I found this company about to advance in skirmish line. 
The situation was mixed up, and no one knew just where 
any other outfit was. Several companies of the 319th had 
apparently advanced some distance ahead of us by "sliding 
through," that is, going past machine gun nests in the dark 
without cleaning them out. Night advancing is about as 
rotten for one side as the other. The Boche was always 
afraid of it, and if it could have been done without units 



The Cnncl Drive 85 

becoming scattered and lost, and if it were followed by sys- 
tematic back action to clean up what was left in the rear, it 
would have produced good results, but when not done to 
perfection it often resulted in unexpected attacks on the 
support outfits and a cutting ofif of the front ones. In the 
present instance, as we learned later, the companies in ad- 
vance had done a lot of damage, but had to fight their way 
back and did not gain the ground permanently. 

I formed my men on the right flank of the company, and 
we had advanced only a few yards with them, when we 
were met with a burst of fire from the bushes ahead of 
us. We all dropped flat, and I went up to the center of the 
company to learn how the Captain intended to flank the 
nest, and found one of their lieutenants dying with a bullet 
in the chest, while the Captain had decided to defend his 
present position for the night, and wait until daylight before 
■resuming the attack. Our machine guns sprayed the bushes 
while the company took up their position for the night in 
the ditch of the railway bank. My men occupied fox holes 
at the right of the company, while the two machine guns 
were trained down the track across the field to protect the 
open flank, and thus, barring sentries and patrols, and an 
occasional awakening when a shell landed near, we slept 
that night. 

The tenth of October was a day full of mixed-up situa- 
tions, movings back and forth and sideways with little ac- 
complished, and shelling everywhere. Many a time that 
morning I cursed my job, and wished I was a "buck pri- 
vate" so that I could attach myself to any outfit I happened 
to meet instead of having to continue wandering around 
trying to learn the situation and find my own outfit. The 
company which we had found late at night did not renew 
their attack in the morning, for they were relieved and or- 
dered back to the support. We had to locate and rejoin our 
own outfit, became scattered in the woods, and drifted into 
our own company in small groups. At one time I found 
myself entirely alone, for in waiting for a group which had 
got behind, I lost both sides of the gap, and my chagrin 
and disgust as I went around looking for them, combined 



86 • A Blue Ridge Memoir 

with such fatigue that I felt I could hardly walk another 
step, made it a more miserable time than the sharpest fight- 
ing. At one time I found myself in with the Fourth Divi- 
sion, and thought of going forward with them to fight as a 
private, but reminded myself that what I could do as a single 
extra man would not compensate for what might happen if 
a gap were left between the 319th and 320th, so I kept 
on combing the northern slope of the Bois des Ogons until 
I finally ran into our Battalion and found that most of my 
men had landed there already, though some never did find 
it and were used during the rest of the drive as stretcher 
bearers or ammunition carriers by the reserve companies that 
handled those jobs. 

Company I was about to make a new advance when I 
joined them. As we came out from the shelter of the corner 
of the woods and deployed on the exposed slope facing the 
enemy lines we advanced against a storm of shell and ma- 
chine gun fire. Part of the first battalion was ahead of us, 
but the Boche positions were within easy range on our left 
front and had a clear view, so that we might as well have 
been the front line for all the good our technical designation 
as "support battalion" did. In front of us a group of 
buildings — the Ville au Bois farm — was getting a terrible 
drubbing. "Big stufi'" was landing among the stone build- 
ings and frame shanties, and chunks of masonry and planks 
were jumping around as if a cyclone had struck the place. 
It would be suicide to go through it, so we circled around it 
on the open field to the left, and dropped into the shell holes 
and road ditches in front of the farm, where we were or- 
dered to await developments. 

And await developments we did, the most interesting de- 
velopment being where the next shell was going to land. 
All the rest of that day I Company lay in the road ditch, 
with L Company in the shell holes in front, while Boche 
planes circled over us, and Boche shells peppered the whole 
area in general, but that infernal farm and the road in 
front of it in particular. It was a trying time for nerves. 
Every few minutes all day a shell would be heard coming, 
the men would shrink deeper into the bottom of the ditch. 



The Cunel Drive 87 

and hold their breath till it went off. Fortunately they 
seemed to be intended for the buildings, and we only got the 
"shorts" and the back-flying fragments. It is a never-ending 
wonder, to all who have ever been shelled, how many shells 
can land close and how few men get hit, and an equal wonder 
that there is such a large measure of protection in a shallow 
hole or ditch. Shell after shell would land in the road, the 
fragments go flying over us, and miss everybody. During 
that day and the following night we had two men killed and 
about half a dozen wounded, while an observer seeing us 
approach that ditch across the clearing and weather the bom- 
bardment would have thought the whole company was 
doomed. The men smoked or chewed to occupy their minds 
and keep their nerves steady, and ate canned beef and crack- 
ers at intervals when it was not too hot. I recall several 
times taking some old letters from home out of my pocket 
and reading them, but with all these little occupations our 
minds were mainly concentrated on the destination of the 
next shell. Meanwhile our artillery furiously shelled some 
unoccupied ground on our left, harming neither friend nor 
foe- The 319th was on the left of this bombarded gap, 
where shells from both sides were landing, and I got a 
chance to go up occasionally and keep in touch with them 
during lulls in the shelling, and found them holding, but 
•not advancing, their numbers having been depleted and their 
organization confused by the night fighting they had just 
come through. Apparently everything had come to a stand- 
still, and it was our fate to act as passive targets for the 
Boche artillery, without any chance to get back at them. 
From time to time orders would come to advance, but would 
be countermanded before the time came. Artillery would be 
ordered on a certain place and fail to produce, and wheti 
night fell the positions were unchanged. 

At last the order came for a fresh advance, and in the 
morning we formed in the field in front of the farm and 
started up the hill, but had to wait again for a few minutes 
in shell holes while our artillery repeated the now-familiar 
process of shelling the wrong place. This lack of liaison 
with the artillery was our greatest handicap throughout the 



88 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

Cunel drive, as the further events of that morning showed. 
We resumed the advance, and soon came in sight of the 
church tower of Cunel, only a kilometer or so away, but 
between it and us were patches of woodland filled with ma- 
chine guns and field pieces as thick as pumpkins in a corn 
field. We had crossed over a protecting ridge in the field 
and were approaching one of these little woods, when the 
machine guns opened up on us. We dropped flat, and 
started at once to advance "by rushes," or "filtering," a few 
men at a time jumping up and running a few yards, then 
diving behind any slight swale they could find, like a base- 
ball player sliding for a base, and so getting under cover 
before a gun could be sighted on them. In this way we 
reached the edge of the woods with a surprising degree of 
safety, although bullets were plowing up the turf among us. 
A group of us had reached an abandoned Boche field gun at 
the forest's edge, and were taking shelter behind its metal 
"apron," while a few men had even penetrated into the woods 
as scouts, so that we were in high 'hopes of flanking and 
cleaning out the opposition with little trouble, when to my 
surprise I received an order to withdraw to the ridge back in 
the field. We did so, but not without suflfering more casual- 
ties in the withdrawal than we had in the advance. It ap- 
peared that the INIajor had received notice that our guns 
were about to lay a heavy barrage on that comer of woods, 
and that our troops must be cleared from it instantly, but the 
barrage never came, and a successful action on our part was 
spoiled. Private Hood, our wild-eyed mountaineer, who had 
fired from a tree during the first drive when the rest of us 
were hugging the ground, again showed his reckless con- 
tempt of danger, but this time he got caught. He came to 
me with a message from the Company Commander and I 
sent him back with a reply, telling him to get behind a little 
rise of ground and keep low. Instead, he ran full tilt in tl.e 

open, shouting: "The 's can't get m.e!" and fell 

with three bullets through his body. We never thought he 
would live an hour, and were as surprised as we were de- 
lighted when we got a letter from him from a base hospital 
some weeks later. Private Foy H. Spangler, one of the 



The Cuncl Drive 89 

stretcher bearers of my platoon, learned that a man had been 
left wounded as the company withdrew, and fearlessly went 
out to get him ; the guns opened up and he fell dead, while 
his helper got back with a bullet in his shoulder. He gave 
his life willingly to help a comrade, and a truer Christian 
soldier never lived and died than he. 

We re-formed and advanced into the Bois de Malau- 
mont, leaving the scene of our interrupted skirmish on our 
left, for the 319th to tackle after it should be shelled. All 
that day that nest continued to take its toll of American 
lives, and it filled us with bitter chagrin to know that it had 
been almost in our hands and would have been but for a 
staff blunder. 

The Boche positions which we were now running up 
against formed part of the Kreimhilde Stellung, a complete 
defensive system running the entire length of the front at 
some distance to the rear of the even more famous Hinden- 
burg Line. We kept seeing sign boards in German marked 
"Kreimhilde Stellung" with various other unintelligible let- 
ters and figures, although the defensive positions w^ere so 
continuous that it was impossible to see where one "system" 
left oflf and another began. 

W^e emerged from the Bois de JMalaumont at the northern 
edge without difficulty, for the woods had been already 
cleared except for a few snipers, by the companies on our 
right, and we dropped into the ditch of the Cunel-Brieulles 
road which ran transverse in front of the woods. Major 
Emory came up and sent Lieutenant Dunmire with the First 
Platoon to reconnoitre a fresh patch of woods on our left 
front, the result of which was that they very nearly got cap- 
tured, for the woods and the field beside it were full of 
Boche, and they had to fight their way back after being al- 
most surrounded. The Company later advanced some dis- 
tance into the field and lay in shell holes, but by that time the 
strength had been so depleted by casualties and our left flank 
so badly exposed that we could not advance further and 
never did take the next woods. The Division on our right 
were ahead of us, and Lieutenant Calkins with part of M 
Company pulled ofif a pretty piece of work when our right 



90 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

was held up, by taking his men in a half circle into this Di- 
vision's sector and coming in behind the nests that had con- 
fronted him, killing or capturing every Boche in that whole 
patch of woods. But we on the left were not so fortunate, 
as we were already ahead of the 319th, and were being fired 
on from their sector, while our attempt to help them to ad- 
vance in the morning had been stopped on account of the 
supposed barrage plans. 

Meanwhile our advance, small though it. was, had left 
open the whole left edge of the Bois de Alalaumont, for al- 
though we had been in contact with the 319th, there was now 
a lateral gap between us of just as great a distance as we 
had advanced ahead of them. This gap was my concern, and 
the Major sent me back to find out its extent, and to see 
that no harm resulted from it. A whole platoon could no 
longer be spared from I Company, so I took with me only a 
small patrol, consisting of Sergeant Sugden, Corporal Shay, 
and two or three privates. As we were going back, keeping 
just inside the cover of the woods, we ran into a streak of 
the strongest gas we have ever experienced. I do not know 
yet what kind it was, for it had none of the typical odors, 
but was rather anaesthetic in its effect, choking you like 
ether, and if we had not instantly put on our masks we 
would have been quickly knocked out. Another hundred 
yards brought us clear of it, and no harm was done. We 
found the right flank of the 319th where we had left it and 
luckily picked up several lost I Company men on the way 
back, so that we now had a fair-sized group, and with this 
little outfit we took up our station in the northwest corner of 
the woods, where we could observe, and at least attempt to 
prevent, any attempt by the Boche to reoccupy the woods. 

The afternoon passed with no change in the situation, the 
Boche shells landing here and there in the woods and field. 
One of my men, an Italian, had started away from us with 
a message for Battalion Headquarters. I heard a shell 
burst some distance away and a minute later he came run- 
ning up to us: "Lieutena' Luke'," he cried, "fexa me up. 
Sheila bust; dama near kill." We all had to laugh at him 
in spite of his misfortune, and indeed it was hard for the 



The Ciincl Drive - 91 

rest of us to consider it a misfortune, for as I bandaged a 
clean little hole in his arm, every man of us was thinking 
that he would have given a hundred dollars for it at that 
particular time. 

We could see part of K Company on the road at our right, 
and their luck was not so good as ours. Once while I was 
looking at them a terrific shell landed in the middle of the 
road. I ducked behind the bank while several fragments 
went singing over our heads, and when I looked up again 
four men were lying still, and another was writhing and 
groaning with a fractured leg. One of the dead men had 
been sitting in the ditch facing us, and he had not changed 
his position nor moved a muscle. Only a hideous snoot-like 
protrusion where his face had been showed where the flying 
metal had struck him. The wounded man was carried back 
on a shelter half, for there were no stretchers left. 

Late in the afternoon I began to get anxious for news of 
the situation and further orders, so as everything was quiet, 
I left Sergeant Sugden in charge, and started back to Bat- 
talion Headquarters at the southern edge of the woods. I 
found the Alajor and his staff occuping a group of shallow 
"bivvies" and met Lieutenant France and Sergeant Barn- 
hart, who had come there for the same purpose. A lieuten- 
ant from the Fifth Division, with several "runners" had just 
arrived to arrange for relieving us that night, and we were 
mightily thankful, for we all felt that we could hardly 
"carry on" for another day. One officer of the battalion was 
already virtually out of action from shellshock, as complete a 
case of nervous breakdown as you could ever see, and we 
were all more or less on the verge of it. Lieutenant France 
and the Fifth Division officer were standing by the side of 
a shallow hole in which the Major was sitting, talking with 
him, while the rest of the headquarters men were sitting in 
the other meagre "bivvies" or lying on the ground when 
without an instant's warning a tremendous shell landed in 
our midst. No one heard it coming, and none of us ever 
felt such a tremendous concussion as that shell caused. For 
a few seconds I felt dazed. My limbs shook, my ears rang 
as I felt the clods of dirt land on me and wondered whether 



92 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

I were wounded. I looked around and saw that the others 
were in the same condition, and for a minute no one could 
speak. I was brought to my senses by hearing a man ask 
in a calm matter-of-fact voice if someone would please put 
a tourniquet on his leg. There was one of the Fifth Divi- 
sion runners, lying on his back, with two toes blown off his 
left foot and an ugly hole in his right leg just below the 
knee, and he was the coolest and least shaken man of the 
whole crowd. Sergeant Barnhart and I bandaged him up, 
and saw him started back on a stretcher, and, although I do 
not know what his name is or anything further about him, 
I have never ceased to admire him for his calmness. We 
hardly dared to look around, for we were sure some of our 
comrades had been killed, and when we had completed our 
bandaging and looked .about us, we saw Lieutenant France 
lying dead. He was my company commander and my inti- 
mate friend, with whom I had been talking but a short mo- 
ment before, and, in spite of our familiarity with death and 
sudden shocks, it came as a great blow to realize that he 
was gone. He was not badly mangled, but the Fifth Divi- 
sion lieutenant and one other man were torn to pieces and 
the earth was strewn in a wide radius with quivering chunks 
of human flesh. Fifteen yards or more from the shell hole 
was a right hand, severed clean at the wrist. I recalled it 
with a shudder several weeks later when I happened to see 
e,n ivory model hand in a shop window in Paris. When I 
rejoined my men at the northern edge of the woods, I 
learned that no one had been hurt during my absence, but 
that a few minutes after I had left a sharp fragment, like a 
railroad spike, had driven itself deep into the bank just 
where my chest had been. Call it Luck or call it Provi- 
dence, it was with me on the Eleventh of October, or I 
would not be alive today. 

As long as daylight had lasted, there was no danger of 
anything occurring in our gap short of an organized coun- 
ter-attack, which our small post could at least observe in 
time to give warning to the flank companies. But with the 
coming of night, the problem became more ticklish, for now 
the great danger was that Boche machine gunners and 



The Cuncl Drive 93 

snipers might "filter" back into the woods singly or by twos 
and threes, reoccupy the camouflaged positions from which 
they had been driven, and thus undo by stealth what we had 
done by struggle and sacrifice, and force us to clean out the 
woods all over again the next morning. To prevent this in 
the darkness, the remnant of our original "combat liaison 
group" was inadequate ; it was necessary to occupy the 
whole edge of the woods. Sergeant Barnhart and I there- 
fore returned once more to Battalion Headquarters as dark- 
ness was falling, to hunt for some more men, and found 
part of K Company, which had been so badly shot up that 
the scattered remnants had been drawn out of the front line. 
Finding Lieutenant Earl, who had just joined K Company 
that day from the Candidates' School, we hastily organized a 
small platoon — all that we could find who were still in 
condition to fight — and started again for the woods, taking 
a circuitous route to avoid a hollow that was full of gas. 

Our job now was not only to protect the gap, but at the 
same time to locate all the nearby companies so that we 
would be certain just how great the gap was and could 
judge how best to place our men. The Fifth Division was to 
relieve us about midnight, so we knew that if we could 
keep the Boche from filtering back, for five or six hours 
more, our job would be done and we could shift our burderv 
to the fresh troops with no apologies. We were near to the 
limit of our physical strength, and what is worse, our ner- 
vous strength, and but for this knowledge of the coming 
relief, we would have felt almost hopeless. 

As it was now quite dark, wx decided to go around the 
edge of the woods in the open field; instead of attempting to 
use the trails through, and as we reached the southwestern 
corner of the "Bois," near the scene of our morning's skir- 
mish, we could distinguish the figures of men lying in al- 
most every shell hole. I wondered what platoon this could 
be that, unknown to us, had come to help us fill our gap, 
and I went up to one group of them and asked in a whisper 
who they were. None answered, and thinking they might 
have fallen asleep at their posts, I shook one of them by 
the shoulder. Only then did I realize that I was speaking to 



94 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

a dead man, and that every one of those men, who lay in 
their holes so naturally, facing the enemy as though still in- 
tent on defending their ground, had already finished their 
fight, and had heen relieved ahead of us. 

We continued under the shadow of the trees until we came 
to a little vista where a trail led from the field into the woods, 
and thinking that this was a likely place for the Boche to 
sneak back into the woods if he attempted it anywhere, I 
left the men there in charge of Lieutenant Earl, while Ser- 
geant Barnhart and I went on by ourselves to locate I Com- 
pany and reconnoitre the whole situation. We could not be 
quite certain that some enemy had not already entered the 
woods so we posted sentries in rear as well as in front of the 
group and kept absolute silence. 

The Sergeant and I each took a big chew of tobacco to 
steady our nerves, took our revolvers out of the holsters, and 
started breaking through the underbrush toward the front of 
the woods, stopping at intervals to listen for any sound of 
hidden enemy. We emerged on the Cunel-Brieulles road 
where we had been in the morning, without seeing a sign 
of friend or foe, and believing that some of our troops must 
be somewhere in the field in front of us, we started cau- 
tiously over the shell-pocked ground in the direction of the 
enemy. Wo. did not know whether, in the exact direction 
that we chose, we should run into any Americans or whether 
we had an open path straight into the Boche positions, and 
it was well that we went carefully, for the latter proved to 
be the case. We had progressed as much as four hundred 
yards from the road, and were going up a hill, with the 
woods, from which the company had been held up in the 
afternoon, on our left, when we saw several figures in a 
trench on the crest of the hill a scarce forty yards distant. 
Their heads and shoulders were dimly silhouetted on the sky- 
line, but it was so dark that we could not make out whether 
the helmets were American or Boche. We could not afford 
to go any closer, but we had to find out; we dropped into 
a good deep shell hole, tucked our feet well in, and then I 
yelled out : "Who's that up there on the hill ?" and held my 
breath. The answer was prompt and emphatic. A Very 



z-" 



The Cunel Drive 95 

light went up, and a burst of machine gun bullets spattered 
the dirt around the edges of our hole. Our curiosity was 
thoroughly appeased, and the instant the light died out we 
jumped up and ran down the hill as fast as our legs could 
carry us. Nothing more happened, and when we reached the 
road we stopped a minute to get our breath, and have a 
quiet laugh, for in spite of its closeness it certainly had a 
ludicrous side. 

We were going quietly along the road a minute later when 
we heard a faint moan from the ditch that made us jump, 
for we thought all the figures lying still along the roadside 
were dead. We stopped and found it was one of the K 
Company men whom I had seen hit that afternoon, and 
whom I had thought instantly killed. Now after five hours 
he had partially regained consciousness, but was desperately 
wounded and we did not believe he could live long. There 
was little we could do for him, for we had our mission to 
carry out, and could not spare a man from our detachment 
nor delay long ourselves. I gave him a stiff dose of morphia, 
and Barnhart forced a swallow of water down his throat, 
and we went on, never knowing whether the next morning 
found him dead or whether the stretcher bearers of the new 
outfit carried him out alive. 

Wq were returning in the open, in order to see what lay 
at the projecting northwest corner of the woods, and by good 
luck met a runner there who was then headed for I Com- 
pany. Guided by him we again went forward into the field, 
this time at a slightly different angle than we had tried be- 
fore, and soon found Lieutenant Dunmire and Lieutenant 
Titus in a shell hole, with what was left of the company 
scattered in other holes near them. We bore to them the wel- 
come news that our relief was due in a few hours, and learned 
from them the exact position of the different companies and 
the limits of the gap which we were trying to fill. This 
information showed me that our forces were still inadequate 
to prevent filtering back if it were seriously attempted, and 
when we returned to Lieutenant Earl and our small de- 
tachment, Sergeant Barnhart went on back toward the 319th 
to report the situation to whatever higher officer he could 



96 A Blue Ridge Meiuoir 

find, and bring back whatever troops he could get hold of. 
He found Major Holt, of our second battalion, and speedily 
returned guiding two platoons of the 317th Infantry, which 
the ]\Iajor had located and sent up to our assistance. Their 
officers on learning the situation divided these two platoons 
into a large number of small posts occuping shell holes just 
outside the woods, so that at last we had that exposed edge 
completely guarded by a close line of outposts that could not 
be easily penetrated. Barnhart and I returned to our origi- 
nal posts and dropped wearily into a "fox-hole" with Lieu- 
tenant Earl. A great load was off our minds, for now we 
had only a normal space to defend instead of six or eight 
times our capacity. A couple of hours had passed in which 
the Boche might have re-occupied the Bois de Maloumont if 
he had only known it, and our little group doubtless owe 
their lives to the fact that he did not happen to i.'v. 

There were still several hours to wait until our relief 
should come, and we lay still, watching and waiting with 
what patience we could muster. As our good luck would 
have it, nothing happened, and neither we nor our two new 
platoons had anything to do but wait, but this fortunate fact 
did not make our precautions any the less necessary. Only 
the Boche artillery was in action, and here again our luck 
was with us. An "Austrian 88", apparently not more than 
half a mile away, kept firing pointblank into the woods all 
night. Enough shells landed in the middle of that woods, at 
intervals of about two minutes, to have killed every man 
who lay in the fields north and west of the woods, and not 
a man was in there to be hit by them. For hours we lay listen- 
ing to them, and fervently praying that they would go on bat- 
tering the empty woods and not change range or deflection. 
Had the Boche once learned the location of our companies, 
our situation would not have remained so favorable. 

At last the relief came. About two o'clock in the morning 
the companies of the Fifth Division began coming in single 
file around the corner of the woods, guided by our runners. 
In silence we got up out of our shell holes and they dropped 
into them, and we filed out, away from our never-to-be-for- 
gotten "gap" and back toward the Ville-au-Bois farm and 



The Cunel Drive 97 

battalion headquarters. We breathed more easily when we got 
back over the first ridge and out of machine gun fire, for 
our safety during the relief had depended entirely on dark- 
ness and silence, as it was in direct close range of the Boche 
guns. Arriving at battalion headquarters, which had been 
moved back to a dugout on the hill back of the farm, I 
found that all four companies had reached there ahead of 
me and had started on back, so gathering up a few men of 
various companies, who had been late finding their way back, 
we continued on down the road to Nantillois. 

We were still well within the range of shelling, and had to 
be back out of observation before daylight, so in spite of 
our fatigue we walked at a good pace, our spirits buoyed up 
by the realization that we were going back to rest and get- 
ting farther from danger with every step. Dawn was 
breaking when we reached the ruined village of Nantillois, 
from which we had started our attack, and we could see 
the high tower of Alontfaucon in the distance. We hurried 
through the town, for it was a notorious place for shelling, 
but stopped a half mile beyond when we came upon a fine 
spring in the side of an old quarry. Here we had our fill 
of good water, and filled our canteens before continuing on 
to the rear. It was now broad daylight and we were fairly 
well out of trouble, so we suited our pace more to our in- 
clinations and dragged our way slowly, for we were almost 
at the point of exhaustion and no longer keyed up by the 
necessities of the situation. 

As we neared Montfaucon, I had one of the most welcome 
surprises of my life. We saw four rolling kitchens busily 
cooking breakfast, and started toward them to get somethinf( 
to eat, as we were nearly famished, and had not yet seen 
anything of our own kitchens. The mess sergeant of the 
nearest one gladly consented to feed our crowd and "told us 
that they belonged to the 317th. A few minutes' search 
brought me to the kitchen of my brother's company, and a 
messenger brought him down to the kitchen to meet me. 
Neither of us had known until then whether the other had 
gotten out safely or not, and the relief was inexpressible. 
We sat down on the around and had breakfast tosfether — 



98 A Dine Ridge Memoir 

beefsteak and toast and hot cofiFee — and between the hot 
food and our good luck in finding each other unhurt, we 
never have had a more enjoyable meal. 

After we had eaten and rested for an hour or so, we con- 
tinued on, and came upon our own Transport in a patch of 
woods behind Montfaucon, near some of our heavy gun po- 
sitions. Although the last of our battalion to leave the front 
line, we found that we were the first detachment to reach 
the Transport, as we had struck across fields and saved 
some distance, while the others took the road. They wel- 
comed us with open arms, and, what was more, provided us 
with places to sleep, for the Transport men had pitched 
shelter tents and unrolled their blankets there and had slept 
there the previous night. Lieutenant Earl and I found a va- 
cant tent, took off our puttees and shoes, and in five minutes 
were "dead to the world." The "Cunel drive" was over, and 
the Ville au Bois farm, the Bois de Malaumont and the 
"gap" were now things of the past, though destined to re- 
main forever in our memory. 



99 



CHAPTER VI 
Relieved 

THE two weeks that followed our relief from the line 
near Cunel contained no excitement, of which we 
were very glad, but much of interest and variety, and not a 
little pleasure. It was a season of recuperation, both for 
individuals and for organizations and in both respects it 
was badly needed. The companies had had no replacements 
as yet, and had gone into the Cunel drive with the gaps 
caused by the summer's work and the first drive unfilled, and 
when that was over, there was not one company of the 
four which could muster over two full platoons. Three offi- 
cers of our battalion had fallen in this drive, and two com- 
pany commanders had gone to the hospital. Lieutenant 
Parkins of my company had been badly gassed and sent to 
the rear the day our commander was killed. 

Individually we were in almost as bad shape as we were 
by companies. It is a mistake to think that because a man is 
not wounded he is not affected both physically and mentally 
by what he has undergone. Fortunately, young men of 
sound constitutions have wonderful recuperative powers, and 
in a week's time we were quite, or almost, as good as new, 
but on the twelfth of October every man of us was at his 
lowest ebb. Will power had kept us going, and when the 
strain was relaxed, the reaction came. We came out of the 
line weary and hollow-eyed ; practically every man in the 
battalion had severe diarrhea ; and our nerves were so fraz- 
zled that even the sound of guns in the distance would make 
us jump. In other words, we were "all in." 

The Transport men awakened us at noon, for they were 
getting ready to move farther to the rear and after a hot 
meal we felt a little better. Added to that we got hold of a 
plentiful supply of issue tobacco, and although it is by no 
means my favorite brand in peace times, I will always have 
a kindly feeling toward old "Bull Durham." Tobacco in 
civilian life is often regarded as a mild tolerated evil, but at 
the front it was a positive blessing, and I would not have 



100 -A Dine Ridge Memoir 

taken ten dollars for the five cent sack that the Mess Ser- 
geant handed me then. It was medicine for our worn-out 
nerves as truly as if it had been given by a doctor's pre- 
scription. We learned that the place of assembly for the 
regiment was in the Foret de Hesse, near Esnes, and that 
we had been unusually lucky in being the only part of the 
battalion to meet the Transport before getting back there. 
We took the road again, glad enough to get still farther 
back, and walked slowly, stopping for rest almost whenever 
anybody wanted to, back over the battered hills that bore 
witness to our first drive and the original Verdun struggles. 

The Foret de Hesse was to the rear of the September 
26th line, but its numerous ancient dugouts showed that in 
the old days it had seen a good deal of shelling. It is thick- 
grown and intersected by several first-class roads, so that it 
affords convenient space for concealing large bodies of 
troops from aerial observation. Our whole division reas- 
sembled here, coming out of the line by companies or pla- 
toons and making their way back as best they could. We 
found our regimental area late in the afternoon, and pro- 
ceeded to make ourselves as comfortable as circumstances 
allowed. Some of the men had recovered their packs from 
the hill at Nantillois and could set up their tents ; many had 
lost their packs or had been too exhausted to carry them 
back, and we let these scatter about and hunt for shelters 
where they could keep warm, knowing that they would not 
wander far from the kitchen for long at a time. 

Two of the I Company boys found a small dugout fur- 
nished with chicken wire bunks, into which they were kind 
enough to invite another lieutenant and myself. Finding 
there was still a little room left, we passed the tip to three of 
the non-coms, and there the seven of us slept that night, 
sharing three blankets and a Boche overcoat which was our 
combined stock of bedding. It was the first decent night's 
sleep we had had since leaving Cuisy six days before, and 
even there we had been awakened almost every night by a 
false gas alarm or a stray shell, and the privilege of going to 
sleep with nothing on your mind was beyond words. 



Relieved 101 

It rained that night and the next day, and the forest 
roads were sHppery sheets of mud. It was late in the eve- 
ning before all the companies got in, and all the next day 
men came drifting in by twos or threes, for some had gotten 
lost or had lacked the energy to hike that far, and had 
found a sleeping place with some other outfit on the way. 
We washed, shaved, and ate, and began to take the worst 
edge off our fatigue. Then very early on the following 
morning we moved, to get another stage farther back to- 
ward civilization. As usual, the order came at the last minute, 
and, as usual also, we had to lose some sleep because of 
it. We were awakened about midnight by a runner with an 
order to get up at 2.30, get breakfast and pack up for a move. 
An awful thought struck my mind as I reluctantly opened 
my eyes and heard the order. Could it be possible that 
some emergency had occurred and that we were to be hur- 
ried back and thrown into the line again? I almost fainted 
at the thought, and when the runner assured us that we 
were going farther back and not farther front we were so 
relieved that we even forgot to grumble at being aroused out 
of a sound sleep. 

A march of five kilometers brought us clear of the forest 
and at dawn we reached the village of Parois, where a train 
of French camions awaited us. How can I describe the in- 
tensity of the restfulness and luxury as we slouched down 
on our seats, relaxed in body and in mind, while every revo- 
lution of the wheels carried us farther away from the night- 
mares of the past three weeks and farther into green fields 
and unscathed villages? It was a sight for sore eyes to see 
anything that was normal, and untouched by the devastating 
hand of war. For all that time we had not seen a civilian, 
man, woman or child, nor a domestic animal except army 
horses and mules, nor a house undestroyed, nor an acre of 
ground not torn up by shell holes and strewn with tangled 
wire and signs of death. A pasture full of cows seemed like 
something out of a fairy tale; the unbroken green turf 
seemed unnatural because there were no shell holes, just as 
the steadiness of the land seems queer after a long voyage 
on a rolling ship. The sight of a cat or a dog in a doorway 



102 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

made me look twice, and 1 stared at a group of children 
playing by the roadside as though they were creatures from 
another world. Once when we passed a couple of American 
army nurses the whole truck load of men broke out in au 
open and hearty cheer. 

Another march of a few kilometers, after our ride was 
over, brought us to the town of Passavant, just south of the 
borders of the Argonne Forest, and here we settled down 
to rest, clean up and recuperate before again going into the 
line. There were bunks in the men's billets, tight roofs over 
their heads, and fire places. Extra blankets and an entire 
round of fresh clothing were issued, and a shower bathhouse 
was put in repair and set working. Meals were once more 
put on a regular basis, and the medical department and na- 
ture began to have a fair chance to cure up the colds and 
diarrhea. Equipment began to be put into shape, and before 
long we began to look and feel like soldiers again. 

The afternoon that we arrived at Passavant was our first 
chance in a whole month to exercise the pleasant function of 
spending francs, and we had not been dismissed an hour 
before the little stores were thronged with soldiers, paying 
exorbitant prices for every imaginable kind of wares. Pipes. 
writing paper, cigarette lighters, candles and canned vege- 
tables and preserves were the main articles of trade, and 
the boys were so anxious to buy things regardless of quality 
or price that they fell easy prey to the cupidity of the 
French peasants, who must have doubled or trebled their 
prices as soon as they saw us coming. Our men cared noth- 
ing for price at the time, for a few francs is of little im- 
portance between the last battle and the next one, but they 
remembered these things afterward in forming their opin- 
ions of the French people, and the friendly Parisian diplo- 
mats would throw up their hands in horror if they learned 
what inroads this matter of sharp trading has made on inter- 
allied friendship. 

The surviving I Company officers hunted around that eve- 
ning for a place to get a real home-cooked meal, and we 
found a grandmotherly old lady who was a real cook and a 
notable exception to the unfortunate tendency just men- 



Relieved 103 

tioned. It was a grand touch to be able to put your feet 
under a dining-room table once more, and the steaming 
soup with which she ushered in the banquet w'as about the 
best thing we had ever tasted. The old dame hovered 
around us like a hen with her chicks, while her small grand- 
son helped her with the dishes and stared at us in respect- 
ful curiosity. It was the first home we had seen the inside 
of for long weeks, and humble and foreign though it was, it 
did our hearts good. 

Billets again, after so many nights in dugouts, in lean-tos 
in the woods, in shell holes, or not sleeping at all — it hardly 
seemed possible ! And here was a big French feather bed 
waiting for me to sink into it ! But it was several nights 
before I could sleep without dreaming of shells. As long 
as we were still sleeping on rough bunks and at odd times, 
as we had continued doing for a couple of days after leaving 
the front line, our sleep was the deep sleep of physical ex- 
haustion, but it was when we finally got to comfortable con- 
ditions and regular hours, and the physical sleepiness was 
somewhat appeased, that the depth of the nervous strain 
showed itself. Many of the others spoke of the same thing; 
time after time we would awaken with the crash of bursting 
shells coursing through our brains. It wore ofif for the 
most part in a few days, though even now after several 
months, I occasionally have it recur. It was also several 
days before we got rid of a chronic tired feeling. Within an 
hour after breakfast we would feel as though we had done a 
day's work, and to walk a mile or two was a burden. Natu- 
rally, we did not start any very strenuous training right 
away, but gradually worked into it as our "pep" came back. 
Replacements began to arrive — men who had never been on 
the line, but who were fresh and unstrained, and our bat- 
talion soon got back to a fighting basis. A few new lieu- 
tenants joined us from the school, to take the places of our 
of^cer casualties, and they w-ere for the most part men who 
had had practical experience as non-coms in the summer 
fighting along the Marne. 

For the first time in weeks we were able to get newspapers 
regularly, and we read daily of the terrific fighting in the 



104 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

Bois des Rappes, a large woods just north of Cunel and 
straight in front of the Bois de Malaumont, in our old sec- 
tor, and we knew somebody else was catching the same kind 
of hell that we had caught the week before. It surely did 
not look as though the Huns were weakening in the least, 
and yet in the same papers we read the first beginning of 
the armistice news. Each note that President Wilson re- 
ceived or wrote would be studied with an interest that was 
more than academic, for we began to faintly hope that peace 
might come before our turn came to go up the line again, 
and the Major, who was a keen student of affairs, would 
give his opinion on each and warn us against being too opti- 
mistic. 

One Sunday while we were at Passavant an order came 
from Divisional Headquarters that each battalion should 
hold a memorial service for its dead. Naturally, in most 
cases these were conducted by the chaplains, but our bat- 
talion chaplain was in a Base Hospital with a shell wound 
received in the Bois des Ogons, while the regimental Chap- 
lain was struggling to stay out of the hospital in the face of 
a combination of a touch of gas and a touch of influenza. 
Major Emory conducted the service himself, and the rough 
wooden shack of the French "Foyer du Soldat" was more 
crowded than it would have been for any chaplain in the 
world. Some one else led the singing of a couple of hymns, 
and the Major arose to speak, simple and dignified, without 
a trace of sanctimoniousness or of apology. "Killed in 
Action" was his text and in beautiful and eloquent lan- 
guage he showed us the glory of such an epitaph above all 
others that man could earn or his friends could write 
for him. He spoke out clearly and frankly what every man 
of us held deep but vague in his heart — the eternal things 
for w^hich we were fighting and living and (some of us) 
dying — the things that we all knew in our hearts were the 
real things and his tone was not that of mourning but rather 
almost of envy of the men whose lives had come to such a 
glorious climax. Then he read the names of our own bat- 
talion's Roll of Honor, about sixty, up to that date, with 
"First Lieutenant J. W. France" heading the list. We did 



Relieved 105 

not know that in less than two weeks the Major should 
himself win the great epitaph of which he spoke, and that 
his own name would head the final list of our honored dead. 
It was impressive and inspiring when he spoke of it ; it was 
sacred in our memories after he was gone. 

Our stay at Passavant saw various changes in our bat- 
talion organization, due to casualties among our old officers, 
and incidentally marked the end of my career as a platoon 
commander and started me on a new and more complex, if 
somewhat less dangerous job. Lieutenant Davis, the adju- 
tant, was given command of a company, and was badly 
wounded shortly thereafter. Lieutenant Rouzer, who had 
commanded the Transport outfit for the battalion, became 
adjutant, and I took his place as Transport Officer. It was 
a surprise to me, especially as I knew very little about 
horses, and I told the Major that if horsemanship w-re a 
requisite, he was picking the wrong man. He replied that 
this made no difference ; all he wanted was to be sure that 
"the stuiT got there." I promised him it would get there, and 
proceeded to learn what I could in a short time about the 
problems of horse transportation. 

Our Transport system was modeled after that of the 
British, for we had necessarily adopted their methods while 
brigaded with them, and had found it so convenient that we 
had kept it. Instead of depending on the Regimental Supply 
Company to take care of the entire regiment with a single 
wagon train, as was the old American army system, each 
battalion in our division had its own organization of men, 
horses and vehicles for the hauling of ammunition, rations 
and other supplies and baggage. Of course, there was much 
to be carried whenever the battalion changed station, 
whether near the front or in the back areas, but the supreme 
function of the Transport was ts get ammunition and food 
up to the troops when they were in the line. The battalion 
"Transport" was the final link in the chain that reached all 
the way from the cargo ships through the railroad trains and 
the motor truck trains to keep the front line supplied, and 
its job started at the point where motor truck traffic stopped. 
The quartermaster and ordnance outfits got the supplies 



106 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

up only as far as the divisional or brigade "dumps," which 
were on the main roads a safe distance behind the lines, 
though subjected to occasional long range shelling or air 
bombing. Beyond the "ammunition dump" and the "ration 
dump" was the area of the horses and limbers of the in- 
fantry battalions, whose work it would be to travel the 
shell-pounded roads and fields between the "dumps" and 
the line. Bad roads or no road, mud, congestion of traffic, 
breakdowns, and shells were the obstacles with which the 
Transport had to contend, and so long as the stuff was de- 
livered nobody in the line cared what the obstacles were or 
how the Transport men met them, for they had their own 
problems which were even more desperate. Hence a "Trans- 
port Officer" had a peculiarly independent job, though one 
requiring resourcefulness and attention to a variety of de- 
tails. He rarely got any detailed orders or instructions ; he 
judged by common sense what the companies wouM need, 
got hold of it somewhere, and figured out the shortest and 
safest way to get it to them. The enlisted men of the 
Transport would take their teams through bombarded vil- 
lages, over fields torn up by shell holes, or any place where 
horses could walk and wheels could roll, with a skill and an 
indifference to circumstances that was a marvel. The Trans- 
port work was, of course, less dangerous than that of the 
regular companies while on a "drive," for the limbers were 
never brought up close enough for direct rifle or machine 
gun fire, nor did they ever catch a barrage such as is laid 
down on a trench or an advancing line of troops. Their 
.danger came from the Boche shelling the roads, especially 
the villages and cross-roads, for a distance of several miles 
behind the lines, and when shells did land back in those 
places they were generally big ones. Moreover, although 
they were subjected to less shelling than the foot troops, 
they were caught at a greater disadvantage when they were 
shelled. A platoon can drop into a ditch or a group of shell 
holes for protection, or it often can detour aroimd a dan- 
gerous spot. Even if there are a few casualties it may not 
interfere greatly with the rest of the outfit carrying out its 
mission. The Transport, on the other hand, was long and 



Relieved 107 

unwieldy; it could not get off the road, nor even move if 
traffic were jammed ; men and horses were high up instead 
of flat on the ground when fragments were flying; and a 
single horse or wagon hit might cause a tie-up in the road 
that would imperil all the rest. The result was that a few 
shells, even when no one was hit, could cause as much worry 
to those in charge of the Transport as a much worse hom- 
bardment would cause to a platoon commander. 

Our Transport outfit had gone through its roughest tim^s 
before I came to it. While we were in the line on our first 
and second drives they had been pushing their way along 
roads that rivalled Fifth Avenue for density of traffic. One 
day they had been held up at Chaltincourt in a stream of 
wagons, ambulances and trucks that could not move one way 
or the other, and while they were held as in a vise, the shells 
started to land square in the road among them. One man 
was badly wounded, and several horses crippled so that they 
had to be shot, and much quick cutting of harness and re- 
hitching of animals had to be done with the steel still flying. 
Luck had favored our battalion as it was, for several men 
had been killed in the whole regimental train. When I took 
over the job, I was plentifully accustomed to shelling, but 
entirely unaccustomed to handling horses, even under nor- 
mal conditions, and needless to say I was more than thankful 
for the good fortune that continued to follow the Third Bat- 
talion Transport. The first thing I did, after acquainting 
myself with the routine and organization of the outfit, was 
to start to practice riding Queen, the Major's mare, for 
even on the peaceful roads of Passavant the mere incidental 
job of handling my own horse was not the least of my trou- 
bles at that date. 



108 



CHAPTER VII 
The Argonne Forest 

OUR period of rest was brought to an abrupt close by an 
order to move, and on the morning of October 22nd, 
we started up into the Argonne Forest. We had hoped for 
an even longer vacation, but the eight days we had spent in 
Passavant had answered their purpose, and we were differ- 
ent men from those that had come back out of the line in the 
dawn of the twelfth of October. Our orders did not tell 
us just when or where we would attack again, but anyone 
could see that our pendulum had swung, and that when we 
left Passavant we were getting nearer to action instead of 
coming farther from it. No one was anxious to go in again ; 
there is no novelty after the first time "over the top," and 
all the old men knew only too w^ell what it meant. We were 
willing and ready to do it, because it was our job to do, but 
no one felt any necessity for trying to bluff either his com- 
rades or himself about what he would like to do. We felt 
fairly confident by this time that this would be the last 
drive, and that, as the men said, "If you got through this 
one, you would get home," for the armistice negotiations 
were progressing. 

The companies marched ahead and were loaded into mo- 
tor trucks when they reached the main road, while we fol- 
lowed with the Transport. It reminded me of a Gypsy 
caravan when I got it lined up in the main street of the vil- 
lage, ready to start, and rode down alongside the train to see 
that everything was in shape. There were twenty-one vehi- 
cles in all — four rolling kitchens, clumsy-looking things with 
their blackened chimneys sticking way up, ten limbers, three 
"G.S. wagons" built like large delivery wagons, two water 
carts that reminded one of small-town street sprinklers, 
and the one horse medical and mess carts. All our transport 
equipment, except a few things that had been replaced, was 
British, for we had organized the outfit while we were back 
of Arras, and I was always very thankful that it was, for 
their vehicles were lighter and more practical for rough 



The Argonne Forest 109 

work than the American issue wagons. Several pack mules 
that the outfit possessed were ridden on the march by the 
non-coms and various spare men, who helped keep the 
train together and assisted any driver who had trouble, 
while the Sergeant and I used the only two riding horses. 

It was a beautiful clear fall morning when we left Pas- 
savant, with a touch of frost in the air. A couple of miles 
brought us to the main road that led north into the heart of 
the forest, and here we waited a little while to get our ap- 
pointed place in the combined brigade train, which as- 
sembled from the side roads, coming from the various towns 
in which we had been scattered. 

The long column entered the woods and wound along the 
shaded road at a steady walk, and despite the many horrors 
that the name of the Argonne Forest recalls, our first im- 
pression of it was one of wonderful beauty. The leaves had 
turned to a gorgeous red and gold on the trees, and had 
formed a carpet for the horses' hoofs, and I could well im- 
agine what a playground it must have been for the motorists 
of the old pleasure-seeking days. It was hard indeed to 
realize what a hell the hand of man had made out of such 
a fairyland, and what sacrifices had been made a few miles 
ahead of us to cleanse it from the pollution of the foul 
Boche. We passed through isolated little villages, cut off 
from the world except for this one thoroughfare, and came 
out into a stretch of open meadow land just beyond Fu- 
teaux, where we stretched our picket lines near the bank of 
a little stream and made our camp for the night. That 
evening as we slept under the open sky, for it was a clear 
starlit night, we heard the hum of Boche planes coming 
toward us from the north. It was a helpless feeling to be 
lying there with nothing to prevent the bombs from dropping 
straight into your face, and wondering where they would 
happen to land. The sound grew louder, came directly 
overhead and passed on. A minute later we heard the suc- 
cession of dull roars as they "pulled up their tail gates" and 
"dumped their load" somewhere else. Then we breathed 
easily again, for we knew that they generally dropped their 
"eggs" all in the same place. 



110 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

In the morning we hitched in and took the road again, 
passed through the town of Les Islettes, and soon came to 
where wire entanglements and shell holes told us that the 
battle line had been at some time. Sign-boards in Italian 
showed us who had been in that sector ahead of us. The 
highway ran between heavily wooded hills on either side, 
and in these woods the division was encamped. We passed 
Le Cleon and were apprc*Liching the enormous church and 
monastery at La Chalade, half ruined and now used as 
Divisional Headquarters, when the column was halted and 
5ve were told that our troops were on the hillside on our 
fight. I let the men unhitch and feed their horses while I 
rode up the hill to get our exact location and pick out the 
best road for the wagons. The whole regiment was distrib- 
uted along a woods road, with their pup tents hidden by the 
trees — a beautiful camping ground — and I located the Third 
Battalion without difficulty. Then came the job of getting 
the wagons up the steep muddy hill to meet them. We 
picked a circuitous route across the field, but there was 
one bad stretch just as we swung into the road at the edge 
of the woods, and we had to use "snap teams" to get up. 
As we had no extra animals this meant "doubling up," two 
teams taking one limber up the bank and coming back for 
the next one, so it was slow and tedious work, but we finally 
got there. This was the method always resorted to when 
teams got stuck, and in spite of its troublesomeness it saved 
the horses a great deal. The underbrush had to be cut out 
with axes before we could get standing space for the horses, 
and room enough to stretch the picket line between the 
trees. 

Our bivouac in the forest at La Chalade was a pleasant 
one, for the weather was clear, we were high enough to be 
out of the mud, and the work was not burdensome. W^e 
could hear the boom of the guns in the distance, but were 
still out of range of shellfire and felt fairly secure from the 
"Jerry" planes that flew over us at night, for we kept our 
lights concealed and were clear of any town or other natural 
target. 



The Argonne Forest 111 

It was almost a continuation of our rest period, though 
we knew it might end any day, and that we were on the verge 
of another drive. The companies occupied the drill hours in 
training their new men with rifle shooting and bomb throw- 
ing and practised with the Browning automatics, which had 
just been issued to us in place of the old Chauchats, so 
that the ravines rang with the rattle of every kind of 
weapon. Meanwhile the limbers were making their trips 
up and down the hill daily, bringing rations and water and 
ammunition from the dumps along the main road. 

The French in past days had built some fine dugouts on 
the sides of these hills, and these were utilized for the differ- 
ent battalion and company headquarters. The ravines were 
so steep that the shelters were not properly dugouts, but 
rather log shanties constructed on the level ledges and 
squeezed up close against the bank and roofed over with 
rocks and earth. That they were French and not Boche in 
origin was evidenced by their "southern exposure ;" it was 
only when we got farther up into the forest that we found 
them on the northern slopes. In one of these our bat- 
talion headquarters had been established and as it was one 
of the prerogatives of my new job to live with the head- 
quarters crowd since I had left I Company, I dragged my 
bedding roll into the "old Frog dugout" as our little home 
was generally referred to. With the battalion surgeon, the 
dentist, Lieutenant Rouzer, who was now adjutant, and sev- 
eral enlisted clerks and runners, we made up what we 
grandly referred to as the "staff," though our only claim to 
this exalted title was our lack of any company connections, 
and it was this collection of "odd-job artists" who shared the 
Major's quarters. The nights were now getting very chilly, 
and we were thankful for the little fireplace that we found in 
the room. There was an abundance of dry wood all around, 
and in this one respect w^e were better off than we would 
have been in billets. Carefully covering the door and all 
cracks with blankets and clothing to keep the light from 
showing out, we had a cosy little home. The dry autumn 
leaves provided us with as soft a bed as could be desired. 
One learns in the army to take whatever luck the day brings 



112 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

without worrying about the morrow, and we had as much 
fun in those evenings, sitting on the floor in front of the 
fireplace, talking and smoking, as though we had been 
camping in the Maine woods. 

One day all the battaHon commanders, with various fol- 
lowers, went up by motor truck to reconnoitre the sector of 
the line that we were to take over from the 82nd Division. 
They returned late that night, and we could see from our 
Major's description of the terrain that we would have a 
rough job when we started to "drive." Plans began to de- 
velop, and the order came to take the road. The regiment 
had formed and had reached the main road by the monas- 
tery, and we had the wagon train lined up behind them, 
awaiting the command to start, when- a message came down 
the line to turn back to our old camp in the woods. We 
hesitated at first, for we had never heard of such late change 
of plans ■ then it was verified, and each company turned 
about and marched up the hill amid great rejoicing, for the 
armistice rumors had been growing stronger, and many of 
the men thought that we were turning l)ack because "the war 
was over." Unfortunately, that was not yet true, and it 
was only a matter of a few days' delay before we finally 
went up the line. All kinds of rumors reached us as to the 
cause of the postponement, but we never found out for cer- 
tain. The job of "snapping" the teams up the hill again 
took my exclusive attention for so long that I had little 
time to meditate on the practical jokes perpetrated by the 
so-called "brains of the army." 

We hated to leave our dugout, and appreciated it the more 
when we returned to it. Each day the moving orders were 
expected, and each evening we settled down by the fire in 
thankfulness that we had one more night there before we 
would again have to do our sleeping amid the rain and the 
shells. On October 30th, the order came, and this time there 
was neither mistake nor delay about it. Packs were rolled, 
an early dinner cooked, and by noon the battalion was ready 
for the long hike to the front. Kitchens were put in shape, 
limbers and wagons loaded, and the Transport "hitched in" 
ready to move. Our last tour of the front was commencing. 



The Argonnc Forest 113 

Our route took us up the main road only a few kilome- 
ters ; then at Le Four de Paris, a "corners" of about three 
buildings, we turned to the right and plunged into the thickest 
part of the forest. A long, steep hill confronted us, the road 
gradually climbing the side of a great ravine, and the scene 
was a picture of desolation, both natural and induced. It 
must have been an utter wilderness even in peace times, for 
the only remnants of human habitation were some groups of 
Boche shanties clinging to the opposite slope of the ravine. 
The sky was overhung with heavy clouds, and the air was 
chilly and raw. The shattered trees and scattered rem- 
nants of Boche equipment that we passed added to the efifect 
of destruction. The road was bad, and we were forced to 
stop several times to let the horses "blow." When we were 
near the top of the hill a short halt was ordered and the 
nose-bags were put on, while the men hastily grabbed slices 
of bread from the kitchen and split open cans of "goldfish" 
for their supper. Darkness set in very early, and by the 
time we were ready to resume the march it was black as mid- 
night, for the woods were thick on both sides of the road. It 
was while we were halted that we noticed a large quantity of 
picks and shovels piled carelessly in the road ditch and 
evidently belonging to some Engineering outfit that had 
been repairing the road. Before we started we were plenti- 
fully equipped, for they often "came in handy" with us, and 
all our old tools had been stolen from us by the companies. 
The Transport men were the best "crooks" in the regi- 
ment, and if it had not been for their skill on many occa- 
sions the whole battalion would have suffered. We salved 
our consciences with the maxim that "it all belongs to Uncle 
Sam," but property rights were surely in a slump in the Ar- 
gonne. 

That dark ride through the forest seemed interminable ; 
now and again the column would come to a halt, and our 
section of it would have to wait, too, not knowing what the 
trouble was nor how long it would last ; again it would go 
too fast, or some infernal motor trucks would cut in ahead 
of us, and we would have to hurry and look sharp to keep 
contact with the forward part of the train. There was no 



114 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

way to get a look at the map, and it was not long before I 
was forced to depend altogether on following the battalion 
ahead. The M. P.'s on the crossroads were more of a nui- 
sance than a help, for they would sometimes hold us up and 
let a string of trucks cut us off, and they never knew how to 
direct us when we did get separated. Near Varennes I had 
to trot forward alone for nearly a mile, to find the way, and 
to use pure guesswork at one corner in deciding which way 
to turn. We had not gone much farther before we began to 
hear shells crashing ahead of us. I shouted back the order : 
"Put on your tin hats," and we kept on going. Luck was 
certainly with us that night, for the noise seemed to stay 
about the same distance ahead of us as we advanced. We 
were held up again just before Apremont and the transport 
of the 82nd Division which passed us going south told us 
of heavy shelling in the town. We crawled along, going 
sometimes less than a hundred yards at a hitch before we 
were blocked again, and we felt very pessimistic about our 
chance of getting through a shelled village at that rate. As 
it turned out, the delay saved us, for as we entered the ruined 
main street the road suddenly became clear and the shelling 
had stopped. Evidently the head of the column had waited 
its chance, and then each team had made a dash for it. The 
air still reeked with the fumes of the explosions, but not a 
shell did we get. We were now in open country, in the 
valley of the Aire river, with the forest on our left. At 
Chatel-Chehery we turned eastward and crossed the river, 
and another half mile brought us to a group of large stone 
buildings that had been a monastery or some kind of a Cath- 
olic institution, with a diminutive village near it. 

This was our destination for the night, and a guide from 
the head of the column met us and showed us the driveway 
off the road. We turned into the monastery yard, backed 
the wagons close against the hedge of trees, and wearily dis- 
mounted. The animals were quickly unhitched and tied to 
the wheels, for there was no space nor time to bother with 
a picket line, and we turned in for what was left of the 
night, as it was now nearly three o'clock in the morning. 



The Argonne Forest 115 

I slept that night in the little chapel of the monastery, 
with about twenty of the men, and if we had felt any 
doubts about the propriety of sleeping in a house of wor- 
ship, they would have been set at rest when we saw Father 
Wallace himself rolled up in his blankets at the foot of the 
altar, for he had spotted the place ahead of us. Our only 
doubts were whether there was more chance of a shell 
coming in through the stained glass window than there was 
of one landing on the lawn outside. 

We awoke to a clear crisp morning and found the cooks 
already working on the bacon and coffee. I found the 
monastery buildings and grounds more thickly populated 
than I had expected, for it was being used as headquarters 
by both Division and Corps, and the whole area was crowded 
with transport of every description, including the headquar- 
ters troops which would inevitably pre-empt the best places 
for picket lines. My enthusiasm for the place rapidly 
cooled ; first, because I thought that our proximity might 
tempt some General or Staff Officer to "butt in" to my busi- 
ness ; and secondly, it occurred to me that the monastery 
would be an excellent target for an air raid if not for the 
artillery itself. It sounds well enough to say that "if a shell 
has your name on it, it will get you," but personally I always 
preferred a little headwork to any such fatalism, and that 
concentration of men and animals seemed to be tempting 
fate a little too much. I scouted around while the drivers 
were taking care of their horses, and soon selected a place 
five or six hundred yards across the meadow opposite the 
buildings, where the junction of the Aire and a small run 
afforded us a protecting fringe of trees on two sides. It 
was far enough from the road so that nobody would be 
likely to shoot our way unless they spotted us in particular, 
and we would not suffer from someone else's carelessness. 
The teams were moved across the field, the wagons backed 
into the bushes and camouflaged with boughs, and a picket 
line fixed up between the trees, while the men set up their 
tents or arranged their beds under their wagons while they 
had the chance. We rather expected to He there securely 
that night and watch Headquarters get raided, and while 



116 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

we wished no one hard luck, we were perhaps just a trifle 
disappointed when nothing happened. 

There was little for the Transport to do that day after 
getting settled. A truck was provided for once, and at dusk 
a hot meal was rushed up to the troops by the mess ser- 
geants. It was their last chance to eat before "going over" 
as they were then lying in their "fox holes" along the St. 
Juvin-St. Georges road awaiting the dawn which would be 
"H Hour of D Day." At the picket line we turned in early. 
I shared a shelter tent with my orderly and the Horse- 
shoer, and w^e were glad to have it crowded because it kept 
us warmer. 

Early in the morning of November first we were awak- 
ened by the most stupendous racket that ever smote on hu- 
man ears. The whole sky ahead of us was aflame with the 
firing of the guns. The big guns just in front of us and the 
"75's" farther ahead roared and barked, while occasionally 
the sharper screech of an incoming she'i trying to hud our 
batteries varied the noise. The barrage v/as on, and soon 
our battalion would start forward. There was nothing we 
could do then to help them, but ever} man in the Transport 
promised himself to do his limit to support them, for there 
was nothing that could come to us that was half as terrible 
as what the boys up ahead would be going through. As the 
sky became a little more bright with a beautiful autumn 
dawn we saw a great flock of American planes sail over us 
toward the front, and hoped that this time our aviation ser- 
vice would be of more help to us than it had been three 
weeks before near Cunel. 

An order came to take ammunition up to Regimental 
Headquarters, and we started out with the six limbers that 
were ready loaded, five with rifle cartridges and one with 
bombs and grenades. The main road was alive with traffic. 
There were other limbers going up and limbers returning 
empty, artillery caissons, staff cars, motor cycles and Ford 
ambulances. Our artillery was banging away from positions 
in the fields on either side of the road. We went through 
Fleville, where the sign boards were all printed in the weird 
characters of the Boche language, and had congratulated 



y 



The Argonne Forest 117 

ourselves that it was not being shelled. Then a half mile 
farther on we heard the familiar swish and bang, and a 
black cloud rose up in the field on our left. Six or eight big 
ones landed about the same place at short intervals, all 
safely in the vacant field so that the flying steel just fell 
short of the road. The driver in the lead remarked that 
that was as close as he wanted to see them come, and, fortu- 
nately, they came no closer. A stream of wounded were 
walking back, and presently I met some of my old company. 
They said that things were going badly up the line ; the bat- 
talion was held up and was being badly mauled. I saw 
Lieutenant Taliaferro of L Company ; he was waiting for an 
ambulance, with three bullets in his leg, but insisted that he 
wasn't hurt much. 

Things were, indeed, going badly, as I learned when we 
reached regimental P. C, a couple of kilometers behind the 
lines. The battalion was being subjected to an open sweep 
of machine gun fire from front and flanks, and a man could 
hardly lift his head out of his hole without being instantly 
shot. I could not wait for further news, for the teams had 
to be taken back as quickly as possible, and when the next 
report did come, it was sad news indeed. We were met on 
our return to the picket line with the report that Major 
Emory had been killed. I rushed over to Divisional head- 
quarters to make inquiry, hoping against hope that it might 
prove false, but it was on the bulletin board as official, and 
was indeed true. A machine gun bullet had pierced his 
breast as he was leading his men forward against a withering 
fire, and he had died as nobly as he had lived. Two other 
officers of the battalion had been severely wounded at almost 
the same moment and our casualties ran high. 

The cooks had been busy during the early part of the 
afternoon, and about four o'clock we started forward with 
the rations. Four limbers contained the load this time, and 
the Horseshoer and I walked along to direct the drivers, for 
we preferred the labor of a long hike to riding where there 
was any shelling. We were nearing the corner where an 
artillery track turned ofif the main road to the P. C. when 
shells started breaking on the crest of the hill just beyond 



118 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

the corner. We were well out of the reach when they started, 
but were going straight toward them, and also wondered 
when one might clear the hill top and come dashing down 
into the road. My eyes were glued to the crest, and as 
they all landed in exactly the same place, I had an unusual 
chance to see how much faster Hght traveled than sound, for 
the ugly black cloud would appear each time quite a percep- 
tible instant before the rush of the shell and the noise of the 
explosion would be heard. But I had more to figure on 
than natural phenomena. Loaded limbers can only be trotted 
for a short distance at a time without winding the horses, 
and I was measuring just when to give the order for a dash 
around the corner, so as to decrease the danger rather than 
hurry into it. We got almost to the turn, one had just 
crashed in the same old place, the fragments reaching the 
road, and then we started, dashing up a bank and down the 
sideroad with a rattle and bang and getting through before 
the next one landed. 

It was getting dark now ; we had timed it that way be- 
cause the last stretch of our route could not be covered in 
daylight, being too close to the line, and under direct ob- 
servation. The track faded out, and we turned up over the 
ridge, following a white cloth tape laid out by the Engi- 
neers. Then the tape ended, and we kept on by general di- 
rection, winding and twisting between shell holes. Down 
into a valley, up the next ridge, and down-grade again we 
went ; a couple of kilometers altogether from the main road 
and the P.C, until we met the carrying parties who were to 
take the rations the final half mile to our companies, for 
even the limbers could not go on to where the sound of 
wheels would have drawn fire. We unloaded at the side of 
St. Juvin-St. Georges road, near where the boys had jumped 
ofif that morning, and started back. I was new to that kind 
of work, and I watched the drivers steer their teams be- 
tween shell holes in the dark in dumb admiration. They 
were wonders at their job, and I went along more for the 
moral principle, of taking them rather than sending them 
into danger, than for any good I did. They were just as 
steady, too, when shells began to sprinkle the field, as they 



The Argonne Forest 119 

had been when fancy driving was their only worry. None 
came dangerously close, but we breathed more easily when 
we struck the main road again and found everything quiet. 
On the home stretch now, those of us not in the saddles 
jumped into the empty limbers, and were half asleep by the 
time we reached Fleville. 

In the morning notice came to carry some rifle ammuni- 
tion up to the line by pack mules. These animals can travel 
in places where a limber cannot get through, but can only 
carry two boxes of cartridges apiece, while a limber holds 
eighteen or twenty, so we expected to run a series of short 
trips back and forth between our temporary dump at the 
P. C. where we had unloaded the six limbers the previous 
day, and the front line a couple of miles beyond. 

What was our surprise when we found the dugout de- 
serted, except for a signalman who told us that Headquar- 
ters had moved to Imecourt ! Our last news the night be- 
fore had been that the advance was still held up and that 
the line had hardly moved forward a kilometer. And now 
we were told that the P. C. was clear through to the other 
side of the Boche resistance, a good five kilometers, as the 
crow flies, from the old location. Some miracle had hap- 
pened, we thought, as we started on across the hills to catch 
up with them. I was riding "Alike" a shrewd and phleg- 
matic little mule, in preference to the high-spirited "Queen," 
because he acted more sensibly when firing or shelling was 
going on, but the precaution was not needed. Not a sound 
of war was heard, and the field we had crossed the night 
before with the rations, in constant expectation of trouble, 
was as safe as a boulevard. Even our own artillery was 
ahead of us, and evidently moving too fast to fire. 

We passed through the wrecked pile of masonry that had 
been St. Georges, and found the muddy road up to Ime- 
court filled with American field guns and caissons, still mov- 
ing forward. Momentarily we expected the road to be 
shelled, for we had heard not an item of news and the ex- 
tent of the Boche collapse, after their terrific resistance of 
the day before, was hard to realize. We began to ask ques- 
tions of some men coming back the other way. "The Boche 



120 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

are running like hell !" was the universal reply. The signs 
of the struggle were still there. Every kind of equipment, 
American and German, was strewn over the ground. 
Wrecked machine gun nests, some of them the strongest we 
had ever seen, were filled with dead Boche, and all too many 
American bodies lay on the open ground that the guns had 
swept. Pack mules travel slowly, and it was past noon when 
we reached the town, dumped the cartridge boxes in front of 
the ruined house that was the new P. C. and hastened in for 
news and orders. 

The stubborn and desperate resistance that the Boche had 
made on the first of November had been on the last of the 
strongly prepared lines of defenses, and when that line went, 
the whole works snapped with a suddenness that surprised 
us completely. Our whole line had suffered heavily and had 
fought for every yard of ground on that first day, but our 
battalion, which formed the assaulting waves of our regi- 
ment, had been caught in an especially bad hole. The Amer- 
ican barrage, tremendous as it was, had at that point been 
too "long," and had left untouched a row of Boche nests 
between our men and the bombarded ground, so that when 
"H" hour came the battalion was met with as murderous a 
fire as though the barrage had never fallen. The IMajor and 
the Colonel had known of this defect in the artillery plans 
the previous night and had appealed frantically to have them 
changed, but it was a Corps plan, and someone on the Staff, 
way back in safety, had "known it all," and had refused to 
amend the orders to the batteries. It was no more the fault 
of the artillery line officers than of the infantry; like most 
blunders, it was made higher up, or, at least, farther back. 
All day men had fallen, and little advance had been made, 
but meanwhile the 319th on our right was making better 
progress, and when early the next morning a new start was 
made, it was found that most of the Boche had pulled out 
on account of this menace to their flank, and our advance 
gained speed at a surprising rate. Then later in the day the 
fresh 159th Brigade relieved the 160th, and went on at a 
merry clip for the momentum was so great that the Boche 
guns could not stop long enough to fire, and the machine 



y 



The Argonne Forest 121 

guns that our men overran and cleaned out were in impro- 
vised rear-guard positions rather than in organized system 
of protected "nests." 

Such was the surprising news that we learned at Ime- 
court, and we realized that our Transport was miles in the 
rear. We mounted our mules again and started back, for 
there was no way to get in touch with the picket line and 
get rations started up except by going there, and our camp 
at Chehery was almost ten miles away. The road was con- 
gested and slippery, and the little mules hard to hurry, so 
that it was after dark when we reached the monastery and 
cut across the meadow to our camp, where to our great 
satisfaction a hot supper was awaiting us. The men up at 
Imecourt had to have "chow" for the next day, so we 
started two hmbers up that evening, waiting for daylight 
before we should move the entire train. 

Sunday, the third of November, was "moving day" for us, 
and judging by the amount of traffic on the roads, for almost 
everybody else. We took the road in a regimental train, my 
section of it following on the heels of the First Battalion 
Transport. The roads had been routed by this time, form- 
ing a one-way circuit, and we were forced to take a longer 
way round than on the pack-mule expedition of the day 
before, though we got a much better road. Every road in 
that area was a continuous stream of transport ; there were 
no gaps between one outfit and the next for miles, and it 
took considerable jockeying to get a place in the stream and 
keep another outfit from cutting in at cross-roads and mak- 
ing a split in the column. In the fields by the roadside 
burial parties were at work, and already in places there 
were the rows of rough board crosses that showed the cost 
of the victory. At other places which these detachments 
had not yet reached we passed many American bodies as 
well as dead Boche and dead horses. It is impossible to see 
a dead American soldier without some feeling of emotion, 
common as the sight may be, and they did not look ugly, as 
they lay on the ground as if asleep, a look of restfulness in 
their faces, except in a few cases where the bodies had been 
torn beyond recognition. A dead Boche, on the other hand, 



122 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

arouses no emotion at all. We did not gloat over them nor 
rejoice at their destruction, hut they did not seem like hu- 
man heings. Their natural ugliness and weird animal-like 
appearance seemed accentuated in their death, and it was 
hard to realize that the shrunk waxen faces, that lacked any 
expression whatever, had belonged to living men. They 
were no more to us than the dead horses that lay bloated in 
the ditch, which if anything we pitied more. 

We passed through Sommerance, Landres et St. Georges, 
and on through Imecourt to the bivouac of our battalion, 
reaching them in time for the rolling kitchens to give the 
men a hot supper. Not a shell nor a gun had we heard that 
whole day, and this fact added credence to the rumor that 
an armistice had already been signed. It seemed too good to 
be true, and yet for the Boche to be retreating so fast that 
his artillery could not fire seemed equally so. That night a 
few shells landed about a mile away, and a few of our guns 
ahead of us started up — just enough to kill the rumor. 

Someone of our crowd had picked up the expression "pur- 
suing the Hun" in some magazine or newspaper, and it 
struck us so funny that we soon adopted the phrase. It 
seemed to lend a touch of romance to the job, and rather 
tickled our fancy even as we laughed at it. Heretofore the 
"pursuit" part of it had been rather imaginary ; we had 
found them all too easily, and our troubles had begun w^hen 
the "hunt" ended. But now "pursuing the Hun" had be- 
come the literal reality. We had had the last of the bitter 
struggle, and our other brigade was having the pursuit, but 
we. had to do considerable traveling to keep close enough 
behind them. Instead of going back toward the rear when 
we were relieved from the front line, as we had done three 
weeks before, we had merely stopped and let the fresh regi- 
ments go on through us. Then even that left us too far be- 
hind, for we still had our function as their support, and 
we had to take the road and start "pursuing" after them, 
readv to relieve them in turn when their strength gave o"t. 

All kinds of optimistic reports and rumors drifted back to 
us as we started forward on the morning of the fourth. No 
one had any real idea how far the line was ahead of us, nor 



y 



The Argonnc Forest 123 

how fast it was moving. Our skepticism of the early re- 
ports had changed to an even exaggerated idea of the speed 
of the retreat, and we took our freedom from shell fire to 
mean that the Boche were really farther away than was the 
fact. We were now well into the German "back areas" of 
the four years that had preceded the American drive, and 
the country was much less desolate than the region of the 
old stationary front. There were ruined houses in the vil- 
lages and shell holes in the fields, and all the marks of a few 
recent days of sharp fighting, but there was not the accumu- 
lated destruction of four years. The villages were standing 
and the fields were green, and the landscape on the whole 
was fair to the eye. Signs of the Boche occupation were 
everywhere, and it was apparent that they were comfortably 
fixed and had expected it to be permanent. We went through 
the small village of Sivry-les-Buzancy, and saw a German 
hospital with an operating room fitted with glass sides like a 
sun parlor. Elaborate sign boards informed us of recreation 
rooms, movies, and canteens, as well as the headquarters of 
various units. We approached the larger town of Buzancy, 
and pulled into an apple orchard for a halt, until we should 
find out what the plans were for the regiment. We hesitated 
to advance the wagon train too far without first seeing what 
we were getting into, so Captain McDonald, who was the 
Regimental Supply Officer and in command of the combined 
train, called the battalion "T. O.'s" together, and we started 
to ride forward. The regiment was in Buzancy when we 
entered the town, and we found that orders had just been 
received for a further advance. The companies fell in, and 
the whole 320th Infantry started up the road "in pursuit of 
the Hun," the Colonel and his stafif riding at the head of the 
column. It gave me a thrill to see the whole outfit march- 
ing together into the enemy's country in the old-fashioned 
v;ay, our strength proudly revealed, after the months d si- 
lent night traveling by companies or platoons, to which we 
had become accustomed. We rode behind the Colonel's 
stafif, having decided to reconnoitre the route and the desti- 
nation before bringing up the train. 



124 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

Buzancy must have been a center of some importance in 
the Boche scheme of things, for the signboards, and the 
remnants of furnishings and equipment that we could see 
through the open doors and windows along the main street, 
gave evidence of the quartering of Huns of high degree. 
There was a "Kommandantur" of this or that unit adver- 
tised on the front of every prominent building, and over the 
gate of a chateau just beyond the town an enormous sign 
announced the "Kommandantur" of the "Ardennes Group" 
whom we thought must be the equivalent of an army or at 
the least a Corps commander. A railroad station and yards 
in a good state of repair between Buzancy and the adjacent 
town of Bar showed that the region had been far enough 
behind the danger zone for rail communications. There 
were no civiHans in the town, though the brigade ahead of 
us came to inhabited villages not much farther back, but 
there were unmistakable signs of civilian and feminine habi- 
tation, and it is probable that the imprisoned French people 
were only moved out when the town came under shell fire. 
This region was a paradise for the souvenir fiends, for the 
vacated billets of the Boche officers yielded up many a fancy 
helmet, and any kind of weapon and equipment that a man 
would want to burden himself with. The size of one's col- 
lection was limited only by the limit of useless weight that 
one wanted to carry. I didn't want to carry any junk, so col- 
lected none, but I saw enough to keep me from wanting to 
buy any of it later, when souvenirs became one of France's 
leading wares. It was in Buzancy and Bar that the boys un- 
earthed a large supply of high black silk hats, of the style of 
Civil War photographs, and the sight of these things topping 
off a mud-stained khaki uniform in place of the well-known 
"hard derby" was as laughable a thing as we had ever seen. 

At a fork in the road a couple of miles past Bar we came 
upon a battery of "75's" from the 77th Division getting in 
place to fire, and were told by them that the Boche were only 
a few kilometers away and might be expected to start shell- 
ing at any minute. We hardly believed them, for our march 
had been so undisturbed and the rumors of flight so rosy. 
Events of the afternoon showed that the battery officers 



y 



The Argonne Forest 125 

were nearer the truth. The troops were now within sight of 
the woods where we were to make our camp, so we turned 
back to ride to Buzancy and bring up the train, while the 
regiment went on into the woods and got under cover of the 
ravine while things were still quiet. 

We decided to move forward at once only the kitchens, 
ration limbers, and water carts, leaving the vehicles that 
were not essential to the feeding of the men to be brought 
along the next morning when the traffic congestion would 
probably be less severe. It was fortunate that we did split 
up this way, for it proved much easier to get a short train 
through than a long one. We had just reached the road 
where we had talked to artillerymen a few hours before, 
when a shell landed square on the road about three hundred 
yards ahead of us. We were going up grade, and there was 
a curve at the top of the hill, about where it landed, that 
was exposed to observation for a distance of some miles to 
the northward. We saw an artillery team stampeded down 
over the field, though nothing but the wagon was hit, and 
in about thirty seconds another big one came in almost the 
same place. The battalion train ahead of us was almost 
around the bend when the show started, and had whipped 
up, getting across, and into the concealment of the woods, 
with only one mule wounded. I halted my outfit, and we 
waited for ten or fifteen minutes, while "Jerry" pounded 
the empty road ahead, hoping that he would not take a no- 
tion to shift his aim a little and hunt for us. Then it stopped, 
and we started forward. We had reduced our margin by 
about one half when with a rush and a bang it started again. 
We pulled up sharp, and this time were so close that we 
were not at all confident of their all landing in the same 
place. A half dozen or so came; then all was quiet again. 
We could not risk further delay, or we might lose our best 
chance, so I gave the signal, and up the hill and around the 
curve the teams trotted, not pulling up till they were well 
beyond the danger zone. My orderly had taken the riding 
horses across at a breakneck gallop, and I waited at the 
curve in case any of the drivers should need help. The last 
team just made it in time, for a shell landed a bare hundred 



126 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

yards behind it in almost the same old spot, and more fol- 
lowed that we did not linger to observe. 

We pulled into a deep wooded ravine, near Fontenoy, 
where we found the regiment already "at home." It was 
an ideal location, for a bivouac so close to the line, as there 
was no possible observation on it, and there were many more 
prominent patches of woodland nearby for guesswork shell- 
ing. Considerable axe work was necessary to make room 
for the picket line in a thick grove of spruce and pine, but 
once accomplished, our camouflage was perfect. Along the 
roadside, from the head of our ravine back to where we 
had been shelled our "75" batteries were lined up, and they 
pounded away all evening with a terrific racket. I had never 
seen so much field artillery nor firing at such a fast rate. 
They had not even stopped to camouflage, and next morning 
they were moving on again, still "pursuing the Hun." I 
happened to see that curve again late the same afternoon, and 
there was a caisson overturned in the ditch, several dead 
horses and three dead men mangled and piled together in a 
heap — a direct hit ! We had, indeed, been lucky to have run 
through at just the right moment. When Sergeant Hurley 
came up the next morning with the rest of our Transport 
he heard not a shell ; the troublesome battery must have been 
put out of business during the night or have hastened to 
join in the retreat. 

It was on the same day that both Lieutenant Titus and I 
got our promotions from Second to First Lieutenant, for 
which we had been recommended after the first drive. It 
was after dark when we finished getting things in shape, 
and had eaten supper, and I took the oath lying on my 
stomach in a pup tent with the adjutant, a candle hidden 
under the edge of a tin hat to read by. It made no differ- 
ence whatever in my job, which, as luck would have it, was 
indeed easier from then on than it had been before, and it 
seemed of little interest when my mind was filled with the 
death of so many of our comrades, the great success of the 
drive, and the details of the Transport. I find that I even 
failed to make mention of it in my brief diary. It was not 
until we returned to civilization far enough to buy the new 



The Argonne Forest 127 

insignia, and mix once more with people outside of our own 
immediate outfit, that we began to appreciate it or give a 
thought to it. 

The days spent in the ravine were restful and not unpleas- 
ant. We were not disturbed, though each evening we would 
hear a few shells break on the hill in front of us, sometimes 
far enough away so that it was debatable whether the noise 
was from a shell or a gun. As each day passed, our loca- 
tion, of course, grew safer, and we lost the apprehension of 
shelling that we had felt on the first night. The men rested 
and were well content to do nothing else ; the Transport 
hauled rations each day from the newly established dump in 
the nearby village of Vaux, and had plenty of time for rest- 
ing, too. Never did a crowd of active young men go to bed 
so early. Nights were coming on very early, especially in 
that shaded ravine, and supper had to be finished and all 
fires extinguished before dark. A few men succeeded in 
hiding lights, but for the most part we did without them, as 
no one wanted to take any chances with air bombs, and all 
had some back sleep to make up. By six o'clock about the 
entire regiment would be sound asleep. We started an offi- 
cers' mess for the whole battalion, had a rustic table and 
benches built, and began to enjoy ourselves. Captain How- 
ell of H Company, who had come up to command the bat- 
talion when the IMajor fell, remained in command and 
proved to be a popular as well as an efficient leader. 

We got very little news, local or general, and I do not 
know yet how far the 159th Brigade got before they were 
in turn relieved. We received rumors each day of how 
many kilometers the line had advanced, and it was approach- 
ing close to Sedan before we left the ravine. Rumors about 
the armistice negotiations were rosy, but vague, and we did 
not know how much credence to give to them. Our chief 
question was whether our next move would be "up" or 
"back ;" we expected to have to relieve the other brigade 
again as soon as they ran out of wind, but we were pretty 
well "fed up" and entertained some hopes that a fresh divi- 
sion might relieve the 80th altogether. On the evening of the 
seventh we got word to be ready to move in the morning 



128 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

and thought that our turn had come to "pursue the Hun" 
again. I went up to regimental headquarters to learn the 
route for the march, and was informed that our destination 
was the town of Marcq; it was not until I had located this 
place on the map and had seen that it was way back on the 
edge of the Argonne Forest that I realized that we were 
going back, and that our "Hun hunting" for the present, at 
least, was over. It was a pleasant surprise, and no one made 
the least attempt to conceal it. The 320th was always ready 
to do what was asked, but not to be glad when we were 
going back out of it would have been preposterous. The 
whole First Army Corps was being relieved, and divisions 
that had been through less of the drive were coming up to 
take our places. We felt that our work was over, and that 
whether the armistice rumors should materialize immediately 
or not, it was unlikely that the war would last long enough to 
see us in another drive. 



129 



CHAPTER VIII 
La Guerre Finie 

OUR journey back into and through the Argonne Forest 
involved some hard travehng, and took us past sights 
just as terrible as we had witnessed on the march up, but it 
was free from shelling and was lightened by thoughts of the 
coming rest and hopes of the armistice. We left our ravine 
and took to the road, but it was by no means an ideal high- 
way that we had to deal with. Roads in the Argonne and 
beyond are scarce, and traffic moving toward the front was 
given the right of way and the best roads. We were shunted 
down the back roads, and even took a stretch on the field 
at one time to avoid being held up by a stream of motor 
trucks that filled the road as far down as the eye could 
reach. Horses were scarce in those days ; we never got any 
replacements for the animals lost in the first drive until long 
after the armistice, and went through the Argonne show 
without a single spare animal. If a single one had been 
disabled, we would have had to abandon some wagon. In 
making our detour through the mud a kitchen got stuck and 
the Sergeant had to hitch his riding horse in front of the 
team to pull it out. The regiment, marching on foot, was 
not allowed on the road at all ; the whole column had to cut 
across fields, and even though they saved a little distance, 
the mud made the hiking a severe job. 

On the northern slope of a ridge near Fontenoy a row 
of eight Boche field pieces stood untouched and undamaged, 
still in perfect alignment and still trained down the road to- 
ward Buzancy. Such was the speed of the retreat that ap- 
parently no attempt had been made to withdraw them. 
There was enough Boche equipment — machine guns, ammu- 
nition boxes, rifles, grenades and clothing — along these roads 
to have stocked a warehouse with "souvenirs." Nor did it 
take a detective to recognize places where bitter last stands 
had been made. 

We covered nearly thirty kilometers that day, without a 
halt so far as the Transport was concerned, except when a 



130 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

block in the traffic compelled it. It rained off and on, and 
the mud was deep with the accumulation of weeks of bad 
weather, especially on the stretch of "second-class road" that 
curved westward from Harricourt to Briquenay and which 
enabled us to avoid the inevitable congestion of the highway 
through Bar and Buzancy. It was along here that we passed 
a patch of woodland posted with signs warning people to 
keep out of it on account of gas. The warning was hardly 
needed; the place had been so drenched with mustard that 
the bushes were stained yellow and the ground was covered 
with the dried splashes. The smell from the road was strong 
enough to be unmistakable, and a few days earlier it would 
have been dangerous. We had never experienced such a 
concentration of gas, but we realized then that that was our 
good fortune, and not because it was impossible. We could 
not tell whether it was the Boche or our own guns that had 
done the job, as both lines had been through there so re- 
cently. 

Many of the streets in these little villages had been re- 
named by the Boche occupants, the blatant signboards cov- 
ering up the inoffensive "Rue de Something" of the original 
name, and needless to say, the new titles were always char- 
acteristically and patriotically Hun. But it was their turn to 
be superseded now, and at one place we saw a neat "Kaiser 
Wilhelm Strasse" crossed out and "President Wilson Street" 
chalked up in its place. The looks of the street made one 
wonder where the honor came in, in either case. The Boche, 
in distributing names, seemed to have the same absence of 
sense of humor which sometimes results in the worst hotel 
in American towns being named the "Washington House," 
for often the fanciest title would go to the worst looking 
little alley that France could produce. The most forlorn at- 
tempt at a "village square" that I have ever seen bore the 
proud title of "Hohenzollern Platz." Some of our big 
guns that we passed were named ; "Old Dutch Cleanser" and 
"Peace Talk" were about the only ones that had anything to 
do with war, the rest being about the same as would be 
found in a bunch of sailboats at a summer resort. 



La Guerre Finie 131 

We went through Grand-Pre early in the afternoon. This 
town had been right in the middle of the fighting when it was 
still going slowly, and it looked it. The streets were so lit- 
tered up with wreckage that it was hard to get a wagon 
through, even though the biggest obstacles had been cleared 
away. We crossed the Aire on a rough Engineer bridge, for 
the old stone bridge had been wrecked a few days before by 
air bombs, as the great holes in the river bank showed. A 
few more miles brought us to Marcq, where we encamped 
for the night, stretching our picket line between the trees of 
an apple orchard. 

Marcq was in a fair state of preservation, as towns go in 
that region, and most of the houses were intact, though 
messed up and dismantled inside. 

We scouted around and found a room for an officers' 
mess, with a long table, chairs and an effective kitchen stove. 
In the same row were several fairly respectable bedrooii^s, 
and we joyfully made ourselves at home after a brief in- 
vestigation to see whether there were any hidden explosives 
on the premises or "crimson ramblers" in the beds. We 
were especially tickled at our luck because for once our oc- 
cupancy was disputed by neither the Boche nor the French 
and we could use what we could find without the "advice 
and consent" of a pestiferous local mayor. All through 
that region were large patches of cabbage, intended for the 
winter's supply of sauerkraut for "Jerry," and our boys 
helped themselves plentifully. For several days no meal 
was complete without a liberal plateful of this booty, and it 
was no small help to the variety of our rations, not to men- 
tion the added pleasure of reaping what our enemies had 
sown. 

All that day, as we had ridden through the villages, we had 
been greeted with the rumor that an armistice had already 
been effected. . All along the road we had passed the usual 
number of disreputable-looking French soldiers, and to our 
questions the answer was always the same: "La guerre 
finie!" We knew that they often got news sooner than we 
did, and we began to be hopeful that the news was already 
true. Then one of tTiem gave me a French newspaper and 



132 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

as I rode along at a walk I read of the departure of the Hun 
envoys to meet Marshal Foch. 

The march was resumed early the next morning, south- 
ward along the valley of the Aire, with the forest on our 
right. We reached Apremont, through which we had passed 
ten days before under such different circumstances, and 
turned into a side-road that entered the woods. Up and up 
it wound, the ravine growing deeper on either side, and 
several times we were forced to stop and "blow" the horses. 
We were now in the Bois de Apremont — each little section 
of the Argonne Forest having a separate name of its own — 
and it was as heavily wooded and as hilly a section as we had 
seen. On the plateau at the summit were groups of well- 
built shanties, and the inevitable Boche signboards, while 
down on the southern slope of the hillside was a large 
cluster of wooden houses stuck on ledges and connected up 
by winding paths and steps with rustic railings. This novel 
little vertical village was the "Abri St. Louis," and this was 
our destination for the time being. The name and the fact 
that its best protection was on the northern side showed its 
French origin, but many improvements and elaborations had 
doubtless been made by the Huns during their four years of 
occupation, and they had lived in luxury. It reminded one 
more of a cottage colony at some mountain summer resort 
than of anything connected with the war. There was room 
for the whole regiment in these buifdings, and many of the 
men even got bunks; there were tables and benches and 
stoves in some of them. Nights were getting cold, and 
we considered ourselves very lucky. 

We rested all the next day, which was Sunday, at the 
Abri St. Louis, and it was a welcome rest, after two hard 
days of marching. A French lieutenant who was attached 
to our Brigade as a liaison officer took dinner with us, and 
told us of Marshal Foch's terms to the Hun envoys, which 
we had not yet heard, and much of the afternoon was spent 
in discussing whether they would be accepted. He thought 
they would not be, and indeed they did seem almost too 
favorable to be true, for we were not certain that the Boche 
was badly enough licked to allow us to march clear to the 



La Guerre Finie 133 

Rhine without a single machine gun nest in the way. We 
restrained our impatience, knowing that the morrow would 
tell us whether our job was done, or whether we had a 
winter of fighting ahead of us. 

On the morning of the memorable eleventh of November 
we moved again, back through the heart of the forest, an- 
other stage toward civilization. There was a penetrating 
cold mist that morning, so dense that one could hardly see a 
hundred yards, and the mud was so nearly frozen that a 
single step chilled the feet thoroughly. We made an early 
start, the Transport for once going ahead of the companies, 
and we needed it, for the road was abominable and our pro- 
gress slow. We Avere now too far back for the more recent 
marks of battle, but all along those narrow woods lanes we 
passed graves. There was no cemetery, for the trees were 
too thick ; just small groups at the roadside and isolated ones 
in the very ditches, American, French and Boche. 

The mist was clearing and the sun beginning to shine as 
we were already on the long hill that we had climbed on 
our way up to the front; it had been so dark then that we 
did not recognize it when we first came to it again. We 
turned into the main road at Le Four de Paris at about 
eleven o'clock, and from then on the stream of traffic, the 
M. P.'s and the "Frogs" gave us plenty of opportunity for 
asking questions outside our own outfit. 

"War's over," "Guerre finie," "All over," we heard every- 
where, with an occasional more detailed bit of information. 
At first we were wary, as we had been fooled several times 
in the past week, but before long the reports were so uni- 
versal and positive that we believed them. There was noth- 
ing to do about it ; every man felt relieved to the depths of 
his soul, and a sort of general grin and holiday spirit came 
over us in place of the chronic grouch that most of us had 
developed, and we kept right on down the road. 

We pulled into our camping place near Les Islettes about 
noon, the Transport using some old French sheds and the 
companies going up into the woods to pitch their tents. 
Once through with the hike, we had more chance to talk 
over the good news, but it was impossible to express how 



134 A Blue Rid(/c Memoir 

glad we were, and we were little interested in the political 
details. There was not much chance to celebrate, and it 
made no immediate difference in our day's routine. But 
then and there most of us began to lose all interest in things 
military and turn our thoughts to the hope of going home. 
We all felt like an Engineer private whom I overheard as 
he was working on the road, "Well, if it's over," he said, 
"why in hell don't we quit?" 

The church bells were ringing that afternoon in the town 
a mile away. In the evening each little group of men lit 
their camp fire, and we sat around ours, smoking and talk- 
ing quietly. It was a welcome change even to be allowed to 
have campfires ; for weeks we had shivered through the 
evenings in darkness on account of the aeroplanes, and 
the bright illumination of the woods seemed unnatural. We 
felt mightily relieved, and happy in the knowledge that now 
we were practically certain of getting home, and glad that 
we would be in good billets for the winter and not in fox- 
holes, but we were not wildly hilarious like the people at 
home. It was all too fresh in our minds, and we were still 
too tired, and the losses we had suffered too recent, to admit 
of much celebrating. 

We had suffered grievously, though plenty of outfits in the 
A. E. F. were hit even worse. Of the "original bunch" of 
officers of our battalion, just six of us sat around the fire to- 
gether on the night of the eleventh of November. Five had 
been killed, and the rest were in hospital with wounds or 
sickness. In Company I about one man out of every ten 
had been killed, and the casualties of all degrees totalled one 
hundred and seventy-six. We were glad there were to be 
no more. 

The next day the men had a chance to take a much-needed 
bath in the army shower bath house at Le Cleon, and clean 
clothing was issued. Then in the evening we had a little 
celebration in the shape of a gigantic bonfire about which the 
whole battalion gathered, while such "local talent" as was 
left entertained us with songs and jokes. The regimental 
band was sent up, and added much to the pleasure of the 
occasion. 



La Guerre Finic 135 

The days at Les Islettes were pleasant ones; it was crisp 
autumn weather, but we did not mind the cold now that we 
could have all the fires we wanted. Our main job was 
cleaning up, and gradually the accumulated hardened mud 
of the Argonne roads began to come off the limbers, as 
warnings of parades and inspections came around. We 
knew that now that the shelling nuisance was over, the in- 
spector nuisance was bound to begin. As long as we were in 
the danger zone, we were never bothered nor helped, but 
once let us get back to the regions of safety, and Veterinari- 
ans, Quartermasters, Division Inspectors and Corps Inspec- 
tors would begin to take a remarkable interest in the "effi- 
ciency of the Transport," by which they meant not our abil- 
ity to "get the stuff up," but the appearance of our animals 
and equipment as we stood resting after our vital work was 
done. 

Speculations and rumors as to whether we would go into 
Germany, and how soon we would go home, were the main 
interest during those first days of peace. We did not want to 
go to Germany, for we knew it meant a long march and 
thought it would involve more strenuous guard duty and 
stricter discipline than living in France, and we also figured 
that the divisions that went would be longer in getting home. 
All kinds of hopeful rumors flew around about sailing in De- 
cember or January, and although they proved false, we con- 
sidered it a good sign at the time when our next moving or- 
ders directed us on south into the undamaged interior of 
France. The long two weeks' hike that the regiment had 
from Les Islettes to our winter quarters does not form a part 
of my personal experience, for, as luck favored me, I was 
not with them. 

It was only three days after the armistice that an order 
came granting leave to a small percentage of officers in each 
battalion, and in our outfit Lieutenants Rouzer, Titus and I 
were the lucky men. We decided, if possible, to go to Eng- 
land, which it had always been our hope to see, and getting 
our "Permission Militaire Americaine" blanks filled out for 
London, we set out the next morning, A truck took us from 
Les Islettes to the larger town of St. Menehould, which was 



136 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

the end of civil railway service, and from there we caught a 
slow train to Chalons-sur-Marne. The third class compart- 
ment was crowded with French soldiers going home on fur- 
lough, and a few who were just getting back from prison 
camps in Sedan. Lieutenant Titus passed around a package 
of cigarettes, which they all joyfully accepted, and we en- 
joyed quite a little comedy; they all went to sleep, or ap- 
peared to, but whenever he would take out the cigarettes 
again, they would invariably wake up one by one and eye 
him hopefully until he produced another round. 

We waited half the night in a French officers' rest room 
in Chalons, and took a train for Paris, where we arrived in 
time for breakfast after a tiresome ride. It was our first 
chance to see Paris, but we could not linger there long, as 
the army rule placed a time limit of twenty-four hours on 
stop-offs while traveling through. The lights were all on 
again, and the streets were gay, but we were a few days too 
late to see any real celebration. An express train on Sunday 
brought us to Boulogne, near which we had spent our first 
weeks in France, and we found our trunks safely stored 
where we had left them in June. Best uniforms and over- 
coats put away for such an occasion were unpacked, and we 
felt more respectable, for we had come straight out of the 
Argonne with the mud still on our "working clothes." Walk- 
ing was difficult at first ; we slipped all over the street with 
the smooth russet shoes, after having worn nothing but hob- 
nails for five months. 

The British army "leave boat" across the channel did not 
run until the next morning, so we went to the British Offi- 
cers' Club for the night, and learned from some other Amer- 
icans there that leaves to England were not allowed, ?.vA 
were being held up here at Boulogne in spite of the signa- 
ture of regimental commanders. We determined to make 
an attempt, and "get away with it" if we could, so we reached 
the dock early the next morning, in time to "reconnoitre." 
There was the boat, and the two gangplanks guarded by 
two Tommies, who told us we would have to await the ar- 
rival of the American I\I. P. before going aboard. We knew 
that an interview with him would be fatal to our chances of 



La Giierrc Finie 137 

reaching England, and our hopes were at a low ebb, when 
we discovered a third gangplank, an unguarded and incon- 
spicuous one up by the bow. We "eased" toward this, 
knowing that porch-climbing methods were now necessary, 
and had just reached the end of it when one of the ship's 
officers came bustling along and called sharply not to block 
the gangway. We didn't block it; we crossed it at a dash, 
and were on our way to England. 

Our week in London was the supreme holiday of our 
lives. Of the details, little need be said ; we saw the usual 
sights, and took in the usual round of theatres and restau- 
rants. But the contrast and the suddenness of coming di- 
rectly and unexpectedly from the Argonne Forest to Lon- 
don, arriving there just a week after the armistice had begun, 
and the relief at not having to go back to war again when 
the leave was over, gave a degree of pleasure that language 
is inadequate to describe. 

We rejoined the outfit on December third, after traveling 
in a circle, from Paris to St. Dizier, down to Dijon, and 
back towards Paris again to Ancy-le-Franc, for it was a job 
to find out where they were. Our battalion was billeted in 
the little village of Channes, one of the quietest towns in the 
world. Living conditions were comfortable, and we settled 
down for a long stay, grateful enough at first that we were 
not moving about and sleeping in the open in the ^Yinter 
weather. But the men's need for a rest soon wore off, and 
rest was all that Channes had to offer. There were about 
two hundred inhabitants in the town, and only one store, 
which sold nothing that soldiers could possibly want. There 
was not an estaminet for miles around, though there was 
plenty of wine and cognac to be bought privately — all the 
disadvantages of the tavern with none of its good features. 
Nor was there a Y. M. C. A. hut. The men would have for- 
given the "Y" for its failure to live up to its advertisements 
at the front, but we could see no excuse for not having a 
good active hut in a town where a whole battalion was quar- 
tered for the winter. 

The men "carried on" with their usual good discipline 
and philosophic acceptance of the situation, but in many 



138 A Blue Ridge Memoir 

ways the hoped-for winter of peace was a disappointment. 
Everyone had taken it for granted that most of the things 
we had gladly put up with to "win the war" would now be 
done away with. But drill continued morning and after- 
noon, in all weathers, even though clothing was still short 
and most of the men had only one pair of shoes and no extra 
uniform. Reveille continued to be before daylight all those 
cold winter mornings ; with what object, when we were only 
killing time anyhow, only the mind of a high regular army 
ofticer can conceive. Strenuous tactical maneuvers kept 
coming on the schedule, often requiring the whole brigade to 
assemble from the scattered towns before the affair started, 
and on one of these occasions our Second Battalion had to 
get up at 2.30 on a freezing morning. Inspections grew 
more strict, and red tape once more came into its own. At 
the front, paperwork had been reduced to a necessary mini- 
mum ; now it came back in redoubled quantity and increas- 
ing pettiness. During hostilities, the Boche and the rigors of 
Nature had been our obstacles, but we were not bothered on 
our own side. Now we were being increasingly "picked on" 
by our own higher command, with useless restrictions and 
annoying interference wnth local affairs. As some of the 
men used to say : "It wasn't such a bad war, but it's a hell of 
an armistice." 

Through the long winter the men have stuck to the job and 
carried out their schedule with as much "pep" as could be 
expected, and a few entertainments and athletic events have 
helped to pass the time, but in every man's mind the great 
question: "When do we go home?" has reigned supreme. 
Rumors have been our meat and drink, and the least point- 
that might have any bearing on the great question has been 
discussed and thrashed out over and over. 

Finally Division Headquarters showed a stupendous lack 
of knowledge of human nature by issuing an order to sup- 
press rumors because they caused discontent, but as it was 
not taken seriously it did no harm and furnished some 
amusement. Our outfit is a disciplined organization and 
our men are soldiers ; they will do their duty to the last 
minute, but they do not pretend to have had any real interest 



La Guerre Fiiiie 139 

in it since the eleventh of November, and their longing to 
get home is beyond the power of words to express. 

It is with mingled feelings that we look back on the days 
of the war. Truly it was the greatest time in our lives, and 
no one would have wanted to miss it, but none of us would 
want to go through it again for a million dollars. Each 
man has his own individual experience, not identical with 
that of any other man, yet similar to that of millions of 
men in all the allied countries. To be one of the great body 
of war veterans is something that a man will treasure all his 
life. The exhaustion, the hunger and thirst, the feeling of 
being shot at and of having shells bursting around you, the 
fear, that all know though almost all control and conquer, 
and the horror of seeing comrades killed and mangled and 
human flesh blown to pieces — these things will remain 
vividly in our memories for years to come. But with them 
there will be other memories as lasting and more precious — 
the singing of the platoon on the march, the thrill of success 
when a machine gun nest was cleaned out. the deeds of sacri- 
fice and devotion that we have witnessed, the friendships 
formed and tested by fire, and the feeling of carefree aban- 
don — the great American "don't give a damn" spirit, which 
really means trust in Providence — with which we went for- 
ward in attack. The monotony, the petty annoyance, and 
the impatience to get home after it was over will soon be for- 
gotten, but the real events of the Great Adventure will re- 
main always fresh in our minds, and whenever in future 
years two or three old 320th men are gathered together, 
pipes will be filled, the old light will come back to our eyes 
and the hard look will return to our jaws, and the wet 
"Bois" and shell-torn fields northwest of Verdun will be 
dragged back from the pages of history and fought over 
once more. 

THE END. 



THE LAST DRIVE 



And 



Death of Major G. H. H. Emory 



PREFACE. 



Four years ago today in a little court-yard in the demol- 
ished town of St. Juvin, I stood before a rough wooden 
cross on which were the words 

"MAJOR G. H. H. EMORY, 

320TH INFANTRY, 

KILLED IN ACTION 

NOVEMBER 1, 1918." 

The cross marked the temporary resting place of a noble 
man and fearless soldier who had made the supreme sacri- 
fice in a most heroic manner. 

As a tribute to the memory of my very dear friend and 
Commanding Officer, Major Emory, and to record in a per- 
manent form the circumstances of his death and the part 
performed by his Battalion in the last act of the Great War, 
I have decided to add this Chapter to "A Blue Ridge 
Memoir" in which Lieutenant Lukens has given such an 
mteresting account of his experiences and which is in effect 
a splendid history of the Third Battalion, Three Hundred 
and Twentieth Infantry. 

E. McClure Rouzer. 

Baltimore, Md., November 14, 1922. 



141 



THE LAST DRIVE 



And 



Death of Major G. II. H. Emory 



Lieutenant Lukens has described the pleasures of our life 
in the Argonne, near La Chalade, during the beautiful 
autumn days from October 23rd to the 30th. It is one of 
the delightful memories of the War. Like all good things, 
however, it soon ended, and on the morning of the 30th, we 
reeived orders to move out at noon. 

We knew enough of the general situation to realize that 
we were about to take part in an attack of the greatest mag- 
nitude and importance. The Army objective was to destroy 
the German lines of communication by capturing the rail- 
road running from Metz through Sedan and MeziereS. This 
would force the withdrawal of the enemy from France. 
Our part in the proposed plan was to break through the last 
of the great German trench systems, which had been planned 
and constructed with their usual thoroughness and care, 
and seize the high ground north of Buzancy. This contem- 
plated an advance of about eleven kilometers the first day. 
Major Emory had already reconnoitered the ground and his 
report was far from encouraging. We were to attack in a 
salient between St. Juvin and St. Georges subject to a flank- 
ing fire from our right. We knew that the preliminary bar- 
rage would not touch the enemy machine gun nests in our 
front and on our right flank, because of the salient and 
their proximity to our own outpost positions. The Major 
endeavored to have our outposts drawn back and the bar- 
rage line changed, but it was too late, and so we knew that 
our men would have to do the work of the Artillery in over- 
coming this initial difficulty. 

Our Battalion, through heavy losses, was greatly handi- 

143 



144 The La si Drive 

capped to meet this enormous problem. We did not have a 
sin<^le Captain, and averaged only two officers to a Com- 
pany, several of whom were replacements and practically 
miknown to the men. Many of our best N. C. O.'s had 
been killed or wounded, and about thirty per cent, of our 
strength consisted of replacements who had been with us 
but a week, many of whom had been working at the docks 
and supply points, and knew nothing about rifles, grenades 
and other implements of warfare. 

It was with a full realization of the seriousness of our 
task that we marched forth on October 30th. All of us will 
remember that march through the Argonne from noon until 
late into the night ; more than twenty-five kilometers with 
heavy packs, over rough and unfamiliar roads. As we were 
to be the assaulting Battalion in the attack, we led the way. 
Through L,a Chalade — le Four de Paris — Abri St. Louis — 
Bois d'Apremont — Chatel Chehery — Cornay — Fleville to a 
ravine southeast of St. Juvin. Beyond Fleville we ran into 
some shelling, which wiped out one of our accompanying 
one-pounder crews. That night the Germans seemed very 
nervous and treated us to a display of pyrotechnics that ri- 
valled the wonderful exhibitions we had witnessed during 
our experience in the trenches south of Arras. Compared 
with them, our 4th of July fireworks at home seemed to fade 
into insignificance. 

We had expected to relieve the 325th Infantry, 82nd Divi- 
sion, in the front line positions, but at Fleville orders were 
changed, and instead we relieved the support Battalion. It 
was a welcome change, and after seeing that our Battalion 
was located in a ravine wdiich offered some slight protection 
from bursting shells, the Major and I found a little fox hole 
that was about three feet deep and just large enough to ac- 
commodate us. It was covered by a canvas shelter half 
that furnished imaginary protection. Several times shells 
struck closely enough to give us a shower of dirt, but we 
were so dead tired from the hike that we were asleep almost 
immediately. 

About noon on the following morning (October 31st), 
Major Kmory received orders for the attack which was to 



The Last Drive 145 

be made at 5.30 A. M., on November 1st. Our Division 
sector was ovet a front of two kilometers between St. Juvin 
and St. Georges with the 2nd Division on the right and the 
77th on the left. Our Brigade (160th) led the attack with 
the 319th Regiment on the right and the 320th on the left in 
cohimns of Battahons. The 3rd Battalion, Major Emory 
commanding, was the assauhing unit in the 320th Infantry. 
We therefore had a front of one kilometer with the 319th 
on our right fmd the 77th Division on the left. The Major 
designated Companies K and M as the assaulting compa- 
nies, with Companies I and L in support. 

It may be of interest to the reader to outline briefly the 
plan of attack that was followed in theory. I say in theory 
because in practice it was the natural tendency of inexperi- 
enced men to close up and get together, which resulted in 
increased losses, as a better target was presented to the 
enemy. Tlie ideal plan can be accomplished only by well 
disciplined and experienced troops under competent non- 
commissioned officers. Because of our heavy lOSses in pre- 
vious offensives which necessitated a large percentage of 
inexperienced replacement troops to bring us up to strength, 
we could only hope to approximate the ideal. As I have 
stated, Companies K and M were to be the assaulting troops 
of the Battalion, with a front of one kilometer. The Com- 
manding Officer of each Company then designated two of 
his platoons as the assaulting waves with the other two 
platoons in support. Each platoon, composed of approxi- 
mately fifty men was to advance in two lines of twenty-five 
men each, so that the assaulting waves would consist of lines 
of one hundred men each with ten-yard intervals between 
them which made a poor target for enemy fire. 

The afternoon and evening of the 31st were spent in final 
preparations for the attack. There were a thousand and 
one details to arrange w^ith the artillery, machine guns, one 
pounders, Stokes mortars, signallers, liaison agents and our 
own Company Officers and Medical and Supply units. A 
first aid station for the wounded had to be provided and ar- 
rangements made to send up rations and ammunition. Run- 
ners from Brigade, Regimental and Company Headquarters, 



146 The Last Drive 

as well as from the artillery and Machine Gun Battalion re- 
ported to Major Emory, so that with our own runners, S. 
O. S. (Snipers, Observers and Scouts) Section, and signal- 
lers (who were to maintain telephonic communication with 
Regimental Headquarters) our Battalion Headquarters was 
a small army in itself. This unorganized crowd of about 
seventy-five men, recruited after darkness and mostly un- 
known, was placed under my command. In addition to the 
telephone, we had all kinds of signal apparatus, a bunch of 
pyrotechnics that would have delighted the heart of any 
boy, panels for aeroplane signalling and finally, late in the 
evening, we received a basket of pigeons. It all sounded 
very well, but the German shells soon put our telephone out 
of commission, red rockets proved to be white, our aviators 
were taking a vacation that day, and my next sight of the 
basket of pigeons was three days after the Armistice when, 
with Colonel Gordon, I went over the battlefield and ran 
across the basket and the dead pigeons beside a fresh grave 
that told its own story. The most reliable means of commu- 
nication was by runners, and at this point I want to express 
my admiration for those brave men who, all alone, through 
darkness as well as in daylight, traversed shell swept and 
unfamiliar grovmd and maintained communication between 
the front and the Regimental Headquarters in the rear and 
made possible the use of artillery when needed to assist the 
infantry. Runners and Stretcher-bearers have received 
scant praise for very hard and dangerous work. 

After darkness had fallen, two of our platoons were sent 
to relieve the outpost positions of the 325th and 326th Reg- 
iments in our sector. At 11.30, Major Emory moved out 
with the Battalion. The line of departure or "jumping off" 
point for the attack was the St. Juvin-St. Georges Road and 
the Battalion was to be in position at 1.30 A. M. (Novem- 
ber 1). I remained with Battalion Headquarters to get a 
report of the relief and that the Battalion was in position. 

About 1.45 the Major reported to Regimental Headquar- 
ters "the omnibus is full," which indicated that the Bat- 
talion was in position. At 2.30, as I had received no word 
of the relief of the outposts, I assumed that the runner had 



The Last Drive 147 

reported direct to the Major, closed our headquarters 
(which had continued to be the fox-hole in which we had 
spent the previous night) and with my "command" started 
for the line. I found the Battalion in position in the road. 
There was some shelling, and the men were taking every 
advantage of the north bank of the road which offered some 
protection. At 3.30 the barrage started, and immediately 
the Germans began a counter barrage. It is beyond my abil- 
ity to describe that barrage. I learned latter that it was the 
heaviest in the history of the war and that if all the guns in 
action over the whole front of the attack had been placed 
side by side there would not have been three feet between 
them. The noise was deafening, and the big shells passing 
over head sounded like express trains. The pleasure and 
assurance we received from hearing our own guns was 
somewhat off-set by the effect of the German answer. They 
seemed to divine our plans and position and their shells fell 
in and on both sides of the road with remarkable rapidity, 
regularity and accuracy. At about 4.30 there was a slight 
cessation in the enemy barrage and at the same moment 
word came along the line that the Germans were advancing. 
Orders were given to fix bayonets and we prepared for an 
attack. The tension was terrific. It was a false alarm, and 
in a few minutes the enemy barrage was resumed in all its 
fury. Notwithstanding the shells that were falling all 
around, the Major went up and down the road encourag- 
ing the men and keeping up the morale. It was a wonderful 
example of bravery and coolness. Our casualties at this 
time were not so numerous, but were serious. Our Stokes 
mortars and one pounders were put out of commission, so 
that we were without the aid of auxiliary arms to overcome 
the Boche machine gun nests that were awaiting us. 

At 5.15 K and M Companies moved forward to get as 
close to our barrage as possible, and to be prepared to ad- 
vance as it was lifted. H hour (time of attack) was 5.42, 
and a few minutes before, I and L Companies followed K 
and M, so that the whole Battalion was prepared to advance 
at the appointed hour. Our barrage covered selected points 
and objectives, and was to progress by successive bounds. 



148 The Last Drive 

according to the actual advance of the infantry. At H hour 
the Battalion advanced as the barrage w^as lifted to its next 
objective. As we had expected, the barrage had not de- 
stroyed the enemy machine gun nests on the north slope of 
the Ravin aux Pierrcs and before our line could reach them, 
the Germans had their guns in action. There was a veritable 
hail of bullets. The enemy positions were well chosen. The 
Ravin aux Pierres ran from southwest to northeast (left to 
right) across our Sector. K Company reached the Ravin 
on the left of our sector, where it was open and unpro- 
tected, but the Germans held the Ravin on the right, where 
it was heavily wooded. Their position commanded the 
whole Ravin and the approaches to it. Beyond this Ravin, 
on the left of the sector, was another deep ravine, while on 
the right there was open ground which gradually sloped to 
the north for about one-half a kilometer, and then a large 
and very dense woods, known as "Hill 214," which com- 
manded the whole sector, as well as the country to the right 
and left. It was an ideal defensive position. For about 
three hours the Battalion fought to gain the Ravin aux 
Pierres. Company K gained a foothold on the left, but M 
was unable to advance. Early in the fight, Lieutenant Davis, 
commanding K Company, was shot through the chest. I 
saw him being carried away on a stretcher and thought he 
was dead. I went over to him and spoke to the stretcher- 
bearer, whereupon Davis opened his eyes and smiled rather 
faintly. It was a great relief, as we were close friends. We 
also learned a little later that Lieutenant Taliaferro, of 
Company L, had been wounded. The loss of Davis and 
Taliaferro was serious, as they were experienced men and 
excellent officers. There was a temporary loss of contact 
between K and M Companies and, as our casualties were 
heavy. Company I was moved into the front line on the 
right of K. We had no accompanying artillery piece, our 
Stokes mortars and one-pounders were out of commission, 
and we had to depend on rifle fire and rifle grenades to clean 
out the enemy nests. Owing to the severe shell fire, which 
had cut our telephone wire, we could communicate with 
Regimental Headquarters only by runners, which was very 



The Last Drive 149 

slow, as the distance was about two kilometers and the way 
most difficult. As soon as Major Emory saw that our ad- 
vance was checked, he ordered me to fire a red parachute, 
which was the signal to hold advance of artillery fire. The 
first was a fizzle, the second proved white, which had the 
contrary meaning (continue advance of artillery fire) while 
the third was all right. The Major and I were with K and 
I Companies. They finally gained the north slope of the 
Ravin on the left of the sector and, through well directed 
rifle and automatic fire, were gradually advancing up the 
Ravin to the assistance of M and L Companies. On our 
left the Seventy-seventh Division had not advanced. Mean- 
while the north slope of the Ravin was being swept by 
machine gun fire, which made further progress almost im- 
possible. The Major realized the importance of the attack, 
and was very restive over the hold-up. He personally 
directed the fight, and was constantly exposing himself to 
the machine gun and artillery fire. Time after time I begged 
him to keep down, but he showed an utter disregard for his 
own safety, and went from one part of the line to another 
while under direct enemy fire. At about 8.15 we were in a 
shell hole on the crest of the north slope of the Ravin talk- 
ing over the situation. His whole thought was to advance. 
He started toward the right of the line. I followed, to beg 
him to keep down. He had gone only a few yards when I 
saw him fall. I rushed to him and lifted his head. He 
murmured, "My heart" and became unconscious. He did 
not speak or move again. His faithful orderly. Corporal 
Lean, was with us, and, although I knew there was no hope, 
I at once sent him in charge of the Major's body to the first- 
aid station in the rear. Lean went to a dressing station 
of the Seventy-seventh Division in St. Juvin and there a 
medical officer made an examination. Later our Chaplain 
and Lean placed the body in a well-built case and conducted 
the burial in the courtyard outside the dressing station in 
St. Juvin. 

I at once reported the death of Major Emory to Colonel 
Peyton and Major Holt, who was in command of the sup- 
port Battalion. I also advised the Colonel of the situation. 



1 50 The Last Drive 

A little later I saw the troops of the Seventy-seventK 
Division (on our left) withdraw from the north slope of 
the Ravin. The enemy machine gun and artillery fire was 
very heavy, but our men were holding all gains and were 
making some progress. Shortly after 9.30 I received a 
message from Colonel Peyton that the artillery would fire 
on Hill 214 from 9.40 to 10.10. We determined to advance 
while we had the aid of the artillery. About the same time 
the 319th on our right had flanked the machine gun nests 
that were holding up Companies M and L, so that as soon 
as the artillery opened our whole line advanced. The ad- 
vance continued to the south edge of the woods on Hill 214, 
a distance of about one kilometer. Ten prisoners, three 
minniwerfers and about twenty machine guns were taken. 

I notified Major Holt of the advance and requested him 
to move up the support battalion. Our line now extended 
from a point about 400 yards in the 77th Division sector to 
the centre of our own sector. The inclination to the left 
was due to the fact that the 77th had not advanced on even 
terms with us. K, I and L Companies were now in the 
front line, but our total strength was reduced to about 200 
men. At this point the advance was again checked by heavy 
machine gun fire from our unprotected left flank. We 
determined to move the line to the right within our own 
sector and to secure one Company from the support bat- 
talion to gain and maintain contact with the 319th. Liaison 
with the 77th Division was being maintained by Company 
A and a platoon of the Machine Gun Company, both under 
command of Lieutenant Merriam. About this time (1.40 
P. M.), Captain Howell arrived with an order from Colonel 
Peyton to take command of the Battalion. He approved the 
proposed plans, the line was moved into our own sector and 
Company H of the support battalion was ordered to move to 
the right of the woods on Hill 214 and to flank the Machine 
Gun nests south of Alliepont while Companies I, K and L 
moved through the woods. This movement was held up 
until darkness interfered by the stubborn resistance of the 
enemy and a false report that our artillery was about to 
shell the woods on Hill 214. During the evening outposts 



The Last Drive 151 

were pushed forward into the woods, and Captain Howell 
and Major Holt made arrangements to have the artillery 
shell the north half of the woods and the town of Alliepont 
from 11 P. M. to 1 A. M., which was done. 

At 5.15 A. M. (November 2) the attack was continued 
and the Battalion advanced through the woods and the town 
of Alliepont to a point about one and one-half kilometers 
north of that town. Here we received orders to halt and 
hold gains. We had fought our last fight. We remained in 
support while the 159th Brigade took up the pursuit of the 
flying Huns. On the 4th we continued after the enemy 
through Sivry, Buzancy and Bar to a beautiful wooded 
ravine north of the Bar-Vaux road. Here we remained 
until November 8, when we began to move backward. It 
was rumored that our Division was to take part in another 
drive south of Metz, but on the morning of the 11th came 
the glorious news of the Armistice. 

I have attempted to give some account of the part played 
by the Third Battalion in the last drive of the war, and par- 
ticularly to relate the circumstances of the heroic death of 
Major Emory. Although this is written four years after 
the events happened, they are indelibly impressed on my 
memory, and, in addition, I have had the benefit of my diary 
and report of operations which were written at the time. 

It will always be a matter of great pride to me to have 
served in the Third Battalion, 320th Infantry, under the 
command of Major Emory. The Battalion saw hard serv- 
ice and made a glorious record. We were with the British 
in the trenches south of Arras, then in the St. Mihiel drive, 
and finally the Argonne-Meuse ofifensives. Three times it 
broke through the enemy's main lines of defense on Sep- 
tember 26-30, October 8-12 and November 1-2. Its losses 
are a fair indication of its activity. The total losses of the 
whole Division (approximately 25,000 men) were 210 
officers and 5,464 men, including 37 officers and 592 men 
killed. Our Battalion, with an average strength of about 
840 men, lost 13 officers and 587 men, including 5 officers 
and 84 men killed, and 24 men who died from wounds. We 
received over 500 replacements. 



152 TJic Last Drive 

The splendid record of the Battahijii was due in a large 
measure to the wonderful personality and splendid leader- 
ship of its commanding- officer, Major Emory. He possessed 
to a remarkable degree the entire confidence and sincere 
devotion of every officer and man under his command. He 
was entirely unselfish and shared every hardship of his 
men, and was constantly looking after their welfare. In a 
word, he was the ideal leader, and every inch a man and a 
soldier, with all the splendid qualities that those terms imply. 

From the time we sailed for France it was my privilege 
to be with Major Emory almost constantly. I was devoted 
to him, and his death was the most severe loss that I have 
experienced. I have heard many people express surprise 
that he should leave his home and family and the brilliant 
future that was before him as one of the leading members 
of the Maryland Bar, to enlist in the hardest and most dan- 
gerous fighting branch of the service. We talked it over 
many times and the answer was clear. German Emory 
possessed a keen sense of duty. He had been a strong 
advocate of war. The honor of the country and our duty to 
humanity required us to fight, and he could not advocate 
war and not do his part. He alone was the one to judge 
what tli"at part should be. 

For the bravery displayed by Major Emory in the attack 
of November 1st, he was awarded the Distinguished Service 
Cross. The recommendation was made by General Brett, 
commanding the 160th Brigade. The citation is as follows : 

On the morning of November 1st, 1918, the 3rd Battalion, 320th 
Infantry, had advanced under heavy enemy artillery and machine 
gun fire to the north slope of the Ravin aux Pierres, north of the 
St. Juvin-St. Georges road. The crest of the slope was being swept 
by a murderous machine gun fire and the advance of the battalion 
was momentarily checked. Without care for his personal safety and 
inspired only by the thought that his battalion must go forward, 
Major Emory, though exposed 'to direct machine gun fire and in 
plain view of the enemy, calmly moved back and forth along his 
wliole front, encouraging his troops and personally directing the 
attack. While thus engaged, he was unfortunately "killed. By his 
magnificent example of coolness and bravery, he so encouraged and 
inspired the men of his command that they held this ven>^ exposed 
position and finally succeeded in overcoming the enemy resistance. 

A\'hat an honor to serve with such a man ! 



u.oriAHY OF CONGRESS 



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